


Tales of the Tides

by Celirian



Series: More Tales [1]
Category: Tales of Series, Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Angst, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-18 05:57:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 49,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5900938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celirian/pseuds/Celirian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Yuri falls, everyone else is left to carry on without him. This is the story of hope, of grief, and learning the lesson of how to move on in the face of despair. This is the strength of Brave Vesperia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the character or places in this story- they all belong to the creators of the Tales teams at Namco Bandai. 

* * *

 

This is one of a collection of stories that is a collaboration between myself and an old friend of mine. We've since fallen out, but she still deserves all of the credit for her amazing writing skills and the hard work she put into this piece and the others in this series. She also did all of the editing. She isn't on AO3 that I am aware of, but her FanFiction.net page is  **[here](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/699406/Salazarfalcon) _._** She has done countless works in many different fandoms and is a fantastic writer, so definitely go check her work out. 

There are four stories to this series and I will eventually get around to posting them all. They all fall between the story lines of the Tales of Vesperia game and act as a cannon we both set up as the scenes that got away from us. This one acts as a fill for the blank space that spans about a week in between Yuri's fall at Zaude and his reunion with Estelle in Zaphias. 

Now that that is out, read on! Hope you enjoy.

* * *

 

Chapter 1

The sound the massive apatheia made as it crashed to the ground was louder than any bomb blast or magic explosion that Raven had ever heard. Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed the closest person to him and turned his back to the massive stone, shielding Karol from shards of razor sharp blastia that flew through the air in every direction. But even above the sound of cracking stone and cement, the rush of the shockwave through the air, and a few surprised shouts from the girls, Raven could still hear Alexi's laugh, his deep self-loathing and utterly hollow laugh; the laugh of a man who'd lost everything that made him human a long time ago. The laugh of a crazy man.

The crazy man who had held Raven's life in his hands for the last ten years. The crazy man who had dictated Raven's every name, mission, move, and breath since the Great War. The crazy man who was now... dead.

Raven never expected this day to come.

Yuri might have claimed ownership to him now but Raven knew he would never fully be rid of Alexei’s power over him; not while he was alive, at least. Alexei could have shut his blastia off at any point in time and Raven was half expecting the commandant to do so the second he laid eyes on him.

Raven was half hoping he would do so.

But here he was, suddenly free of his captor (well…one of them, at least) and it was a strange feeling. Was he done doing the dirtiest of dirty deeds? Yuri would probably never use him as a spy but the idea of being a partially free man was something Raven couldn’t quite wrap his head around. It was also something he shouldn’t be trying to grasp at the moment.

After the noise there was silence and it was even more deafening than the sound of falling apatheia. No one spoke or moved or hardly breathed and Raven wasn’t sure whether it was the silence or the stillness that was making his skin crawl with something unsettling, like something just wasn’t quite right. Aside from the obvious at least; destroyed shrines and giant monsters in the sky aside, something else was hinky and wrong in the air.

Despite the tingling in the back of his mind, a familiar calm settled inside Raven, a calm that could only come from years of seeing mayhem and destruction and knowing what it was like to be in the middle of it. First there was chaos, then there was silence, and after the silence came panic and that was what Raven needed to be one step ahead of. He glanced around to lookfor the others, still holding Karol against him. Five heads including himself and the dog. Last he saw of Yuri was the young man running to the other side of the platform to avoid the apatheia.

That would not go over well with the princess or Karol.

Karol who then moved under his arms and backed up a couple of steps, coughing on the dust in the air. His wide brown eyes peered around at the wreckage from the Adephagos in the sky to the broken gem and settled on something as his face paled.

Raven turned to see that a giant piece of the apatheia had fallen not two meters from where he was standing and it was easily large enough to have crushed the both of them. Putting a hand to his neck, he cocked his head to the side and glanced at Karol, letting out a short whistle. “Wow, that’s a little too close for comfort, huh?”

Karol shook his head in reply. “R-Raven…” He pointed and Raven followed the boy’s finger line _past_ the boulder sized piece of gem right next to him and to the main body of the apatheia. It was cracked in a million places and a million pieces were scattered everywhere, but something else caught the older man’s eye. Underneath one of the largest pieces of the blastia there was a pool of liquid, red and thick and in that pool sticking out from under green crystal was-

_Oh boy…_

Quickly, Raven walked in front of Karol’s line of sight of the mangled arm (at least he thought it was an arm, but really, aside from being obviously human it was too disfigured to tell where it came from…or _who_ it came from).  Raven put a hand on the kid’s shoulder and lightly pushed him towards Judy, Estelle, and Rita who were only just snapping out of their shock from all the action. “Why don’t ya go make sure the girls are alright? That’s what we men gotta do when somethin’ like this happens.” With an extra shooing motion Raven nodded at him. “Go on, ol’ Raven will be right over.”

Karol gave Raven a skeptical frown before turning and walking towards the girls. He had already seen it: the appendage sticking out from under the apatheia. It wasn’t like he hadn’t ever seen a dead body before or his fair share of blood and gore, but it was more of a shock than anything else. Alexei hadn’t even bothered to move from under the falling blastia. He stood under it and watched its shadow grow larger and larger as it fell out of the sky with his arms spread wide as if he was waiting for an embrace.

He hadn’t met the commandant personally, really only in passing, and he seemed like he had had things together, but Karol was pretty sure now that Alexei had been crazy for quite a long time. How else could you explain that guy’s actions? No one was that plain evil without having a few screws missing. All the people they’ve been up against so far were similar. Ragou got his kicks from feeding people to monsters and Cumore used civilians like tissues: something to be used, abused and then discarded. Yeager was only out for the business end of things and Zagi- well where would you even start with him?

Alexei was no different from them… so why was he so scared right now? They had defeated their other enemies and while he was scared before those fights, during those fights… afterwards, he found courage in his actions. Courage and peace that they were doing the right thing, but right now? Karol just wanted to fling himself off the tower and sink to the bottom of the ocean and hide. His body was shaking and his mind was fuzzy and he wanted to be anywhere but up there with a broken mess of an apatheia and a very dead commandant.

Maybe it was because he had just seen a man who hundreds, no— _thousands_ , of people revered and trusted fall so far. So far and so fast. Even Raven had mentioned that Alexei was once a great man who had real ideals and aspirations; a person just like him or Yuri or even the Don. All his life he had strived to be a great person like them, to be strong and brave and powerful. But Alexei fell and he’d seen Yuri start to tread on that side of the line already…

Power was a scary thing and now that he was the leader of a guild, Karol also had power. Power over people’s lives just like Alexei did, and Alexei’s decisions with that power affected more than just his soldiers but the whole world; so would Karol’s actions from here on out. He had worked so hard to be where he was now, but now he was beginning to wonder if he was even ready to have that kind of power.

“Are you guys okay?” Karol asked as he came to a halt next to Judy.

The Krityan smiled down at him calmly with a small nod. “I think we’re all okay here. How about you?”

Karol looked back at Raven who was doing spirits knows what for a brief second and nodded. “Yeah, I’m-”

“Where’s Yuri?”

Estelle’s eyes locked onto Karol who started and looked around.  He hadn’t even noticed Yuri wasn’t on their side of the roof. “I...I don’t know. I didn’t see where he went once the blastia started to fall.”

Raven turned back to the devastation as Karol walked off towards the rest of their shaken group and took in the full extent of everything. Zaude was in ruins; the apatheia crashing down had tilted the roof they were standing on to one side and it was cracked in at least fifty different places. He couldn’t even imagine what the inside looked like but he could only hope that the soldiers that had been down there were safe. Alexei was deader than dead and a little more than messy (best not let the kiddies see that) and there was no way they were getting off of the shrine the same way they got up.

They had a slight problem on their hands.

Yuri momentarily forgotten, Raven started listing everything that needed to be done in his head; from different ways they could get down from the shrine top to what they would do if they had to spend a night or two up there before help could come. Ba’ul was still recovering so he wasn’t an option and there probably wasn’t a rope anywhere in the world long enough to get up to them…

Safety, control panic, make a plan, implement said plan, and then crowd control. That was Raven’s duty right now. That was how he was trained and that was all he could think to do. He wasn’t used to doing anything outside of orders…

First things first; he had to make sure everyone was okay and then they could move on to figuring out the rest.

Mind racing a mile a minute, Raven joined Karol and the girls just in time to hear Estelle’s question.

She looked flustered, if not a little panicked and Raven would not blame her for it. All hell had broken loose and the sky had practically fallen down on top of them; not to mention there were tentacles in the sky (really gross looking purple tentacles).

“Well, Yuri was taking on Alexei alone when that thing started to fall.” Raven said as confidently as he could because as tenacious as Yuri could be, Raven’s mind had a habit of jumping to the worst case scenario immediately. Yuri wasn’t with them and there was a rather large rock that had just fallen from the sky that the young man had just been standing under along with the commandant. “His fastest escape route woulda been forward which was ta the other side of that.” He nodded at the apatheia. “Now, is everyone okay?”

Estelle got to her feet from where she had been kneeling on the ground, healing a burn on Rita’s arm that already was beginning to go red and shiny. “I’m fine…” she said absently, the buzz in her head of _Yuri, where’s Yuri, he’s not here_ drowning out everything else that might have made sense. She swiped a hand across her forehead, taking the sheen of sweat with it. The buzz got louder and she blinked to try and clear it. They needed to find Yuri, right now. He could be hurt, he could be bleeding, he could be—no, no, she wouldn’t dare think of that.

There was no reason to be worried.

He was fine, he was fine, definitely fine, just on the other side of that apatheia.

Estelle forced her breathing to steady. She wouldn’t worry, not yet.

“I’m okay too,” Rita answered too, eyeing the apatheia with scrutiny. She itched –literally itched- to step forward to examine it but at the same time, something held her back. Maybe it the part of her that, more and more now that she’d been traveling with these clowns, told her to stop, to wait. She turned and looked over her friends; Estelle pale and showing the whites of her eyes, Karol nervous and twitchy, Judith insufferably calm and Raven even more so in a way that made her angry for a reason she couldn’t name.

She definitely wanted to take a look at that massive apatheia but this was one of those times to stop, to wait, and instead of taking that step she cocked her head at Estelle.

“Hey, Estelle?” she asked tentatively, “You want to sit down for a second? You look a little funny.”

“No,” she answered eventually and forced a smile. “No, I’m alright.”

And then there was Judy, who reached out and deliberately pressed warm fingertips to scuffed and dusty skin through a rip in her sleeve.

“Judith?”

The older girl didn’t say anything for a moment, just leveled a mild violet stare on her and held firm, silent until Estelle shifted with discomfort.

“Really, I’m fine. Let’s just find Yuri, okay?” Estelle made to go towards the massive, broken apatheia and the press of fingers became a palm wrapping around her arm to hold her back.

“Hold up a second,” Judith said, “You can’t just go running off like that; it could be really dangerous over there. We need a plan.” Estelle stilled and Judith gazed over her head to look Raven in the eye, raising a single eyebrow. “Any ideas?” She asked calmly, like this was a walk in the park.

Raven caught Judy’s eye and gave a barely perceptible nod. At least someone else was keeping a cool head at the moment. It was going to be up to them to keep the others from panicking too much and in their current situation Raven was very glad he didn’t have to do that alone. He was used to being the one in charge; the one that’s supposed to make all the decisions, but that was for his knights, for people who respected him. These kids didn’t listen to anything he said- not seriously at least (which was entirely his own fault considering what he did to Estelle, and the rest of them, just a short while ago), but he wasn’t going to have any authority over them. Judy would, at least, have more push in that department.

Which might be the most annoying part of it all right now. He knew what needed to be done and he knew how to handle the situation because he’d been there before, but unlike previous times he didn’t have a troop of loyal servants. He had a handful of children that didn’t have one iota of trust in him and probably wouldn’t believe anything he said even though, under these circumstances, he was going to be more honest than he had ever previously been with them.

Because this time he was playing from the other side of the field; he was on their team. He would just have to somehow convince them of that.

Without really thinking about it, Raven held out his bow toward Karol, a silent demand for him to hold it. “I’ll go take a look and make sure things are safe. Wouldn’t want any of you young folks to put yourselves in danger.”

Karol took the bow and frowned up at him. “But Judy’s right, the floor might be unsafe over there.”

“Ah, don’t worry. I’m light on my feet.” To accentuate his statement Raven did a quick backflip and landed as neatly as he always did. “You kids wait _here_.” As he emphasized his last words Raven gave Judy a knowing glance. Currently worried princesses, easily angered mages, and young kids shouldn’t have to see the mess up close if they didn’t have to.

The Krityan gave him a small smile and put a firm hand on both Estelle’s and Karol’s shoulders. “We’ll be here when you get back. Be careful.”

Raven nodded and strode off no hesitation in his step and Judy turned back to the group, dropping her hands from Karol and Estelle. “Perhaps we should take a look around here to make sure things are safe when Raven gets back.”

The three glanced at each other and finally nodded slowly. Judy knew it would be best to keep busy while Raven was checking out the rest of the disaster area. She was a doer, not a stand-around-and-thinker. She had noticed when Yuri ran forwards under the apatheia as it started to fall and she couldn’t help but worry that maybe he hadn’t made it all the way to the other side. The blastia was the biggest she had ever seen and it had come down fast and hard.

But she was learning to keep an open mind about things now, especially about Yuri because he had a way of being persistent and doing exactly what you least expected.

“Right,” Estelle replied and straightened up. “That’s a good idea.” The whole area was a wreck, with chunks of blastia, rubble, and debris littering the ground that should not be so huge to be up so high. She made a point of not staring at how far away the ocean was, circling the shrine at all sides for miles and miles. Spirits, but it was huge.

It didn’t matter how far away she was from the edge, Estelle wasn’t sure that the feeling of being about to fall would fade for a while.  At least if she thought about that, then she wouldn’t be thinking about the icy puddle of fear making a home in her stomach.

“Let’s leave the dirty work to the old man; better him than one of us,” Rita spoke up with her usual edge, steadfastly not looking at Raven and instead staring in the direction they’d come from even as Estelle sent her a slightly reproachful look and Karol opened his mouth, though neither of them said anything, “This place is massive, I can’t believe that it’s been hidden all this time…”

“I’ll, uh, check out that spot,” Karol said and rocked on his feet, gesturing to an area near the shafts, a good distance away from the apatheia, “It’s not so close to the damage so it should be pretty sturdy.”

“We can cover more area if we spread out,” Judy commented, “If it looks shaky, don’t push it. Just remember where it is for later.”

Rita answered with an absent wave as she walked away towards a cluster of blastia chunks and Estelle shifted on her feet, clearly debating whether she wanted to go with her, before making up her mind and walking in the opposite direction, closer to where Karol was checking instead.

Judith paused for a moment, watching the lurid purple of Raven’s back disappear behind the massive apatheia, didn’t move until he was completely out of sight before turning away to convince herself that she wasn’t waiting.

Time to get to work, she thought, and started an investigation of her own.

* * *

 

The ground felt solid under his feet as Raven made his way carefully around the rubble towards the opposite side of the shrine’s roof. He was well aware that Repede was only a couple of steps behind him sniffing the ground as he went. If there was one thing to be said about the ancient Garaios civilization it was that they knew how to build things and build them well. Most of the ruins scattered around the world were in pretty good condition considering how many hundreds of years have passed since any of them had been tended to. Zaude itself was spectacular and it was a shame that it had to be broken like that on Alexei’s behalf.

Though, perhaps Alexei’s death was a fitting punishment for destroying such a relic. Raven paused as he reached the largest remaining chunk of the apatheia and looked down. He came to halt just in front the blood pool that was filtering out from underneath the giant stone around the limb he had seen earlier. Raven couldn’t help but swallow heavily as his stomach gave a sickening churn. He had seen pretty much everything there was to see in terms of human gore and he had only ever passed out once (and that wasn’t even at the site of another body, but his own), but he was still human (in some terms) and it still made him feel ill when the insides of a person were suddenly on their outsides.

Ten years he had been a slave to him. Ten years he watched Alexei slowly lose everything that had made him a great person; everything that made him human. Ten years he had been a walking dead man and suddenly ten years felt like a millennium.

Raven shook his head and tore his gaze away from the carnage and glanced up at the apatheia. It was even bigger down near him than it looked while hanging up in the sky above all creation. He wouldn’t forget that the blastia had been created at the cost of hundreds of lives and that the cracked, broken mess all around him was now all that was left of those young heartbeats.

A sharp bark forced Raven back into the moment and he turned as Repede dashed off to the right and disappeared around another large broken chunk of blastia. Following, Raven heard a low growl and his hand instinctively went to his dagger as he made his way around-

And nearly ran into red and armor.

“Lieutenant?” Raven backpedaled as Sodia skidded to a halt to keep from crashing into him.

“C-Captain Schwann!” Sodia stared up at him, violet eyes wide and scared. Very scared and panicked and a million other emotions Raven could only start guessing. “W-what are you doing here?”

For a moment all Raven could do was stare at the girl.  Despite the complexity of the answer he could give to her, really he should be the one asking _her_ that question. When had she followed them up to the roof? Had she seen Yuri? Did she watch their fight with Alexei? If she had, why didn’t she help?

She looked really pale.

Raven straightened. “Just makin’ sure thing are safe for you kids.” He said nonchalantly and Sodia just stared at him like he was a ghost. “I could ask you the same thing…?”

“I…uh…I followed…” Sodia fumbled with her words as her hands started fiddling with the fabric of her uniform. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. Eventually she stopped trying to answer the question and stepped around the older man and stalked towards the edge of the apatheia trying to sound at least a fraction less panicked than she looked. “W…we shouldn’t be over here; the flooring is—”

Raven flinched as he heard Sodia retch. He knew he should have grabbed her the moment she started heading towards the commandant’s body, but he was distracted. Sodia was acting…strange. He’d known her for a long time and had watched her in the knights; she was a headstrong, sturdy girl who didn’t have any issues taking command of something. She was well organized and put together and almost always was a step ahead of everyone else.

Right now she was anything _but_ …

Letting out a small sigh, Raven retraced his steps and pulled the young girl away from the remnants of Alexei; all too aware that she was shaking like a scared puppy. She stumbled a few steps while still heaving deep, shaky breaths and allowing him to lead her by an arm. He had to give her the benefit of the doubt; she had probably followed them up the lift only to arrive just in time to see Alexei’s final moments. She had served under the commandant just as Raven had and he could empathize with what she must be feeling. It’s not easy seeing someone you revere become the villain you have to stop. It wasn’t easy seeing someone you revered die like that.

Pausing Raven waited until Sodia straightened a little and got her breathing back under control before setting a hand on her shoulder. “There are some things in this world I wish you kids didn’t have to see.” He said softly. “Now why don’t you leave the icky job to me and go make sure the princess is okay.”

Sodia didn’t say anything back but ripped her shoulder from his grasp roughly. She began to walk away but froze as Repede barked again and hunched down at her. Raven put himself between the dog and the soldier eyeing the canine. “Easy, boy.”

Repede barked again.

Sodia turned and looked down at the dog with wide eyes and for a moment Raven thought she was going to be sick again because she went white. Whiter than Estelle’s dress white. Raven’s chest tightened in the way that it always did when he could feel a change in the weather. Something was really wrong.

Raven pursed his lips. He was suspicious now. “We’re missing one of our party and we thought they might have run in this direction. You haven’t seen anyone have you?”

“No.” Short. Crisp. Finite. Sodia’s head snapped up and her eyes caught his for a brief second before dropping to the floor. “No, I have not seen him.”

Raven knew a lie when he heard one. He told enough of them in his life time (more than any one person should) and he could pick them of a conversation out as easily as finding a tomato in a carrot basket. Sodia was a really, _really_ bad liar, but he knew that this wasn’t the time to be nitpicking the details. Not after everything that had just happened.

Still… Raven hadn’t said whether he was talking about a boy or a girl. How did Sodia know it was a boy missing?

“I see.” Raven said with a small nod. No point in pushing the matter at the moment. He would have time later to figure out what was really wrong. “You join up with the others, I’m gonna check things out here.”

Sodia looked almost too relieved to turn on her heel and practically run away from him. Raven watched with a frown as Repede finally relaxed from his defensive stance and turned to walk off his nose to the ground.

A ways away, Estelle wasn’t so much scoping out the area as she was trying to calm her still-racing heartbeat. There were some places that had been wobbly and she’d stayed away from them, refusing all the while to look and see just how far up in the air they were. It was disorienting, a bit, and she focused on that instead of the niggle in the back of her mind that demanded she follow right after Raven and look for herself.

No, that wouldn’t do any good, though.

He had it under control, surely. What could she do that he couldn’t, that he probably wasn’t already doing right now? She’d just be a bother. She dragged her lip between her teeth and eyed the area in front of her, littered with cracks and still settling dust. It looked safe enough, but that didn’t mean anything.

Still, there was a pretty big stretch of crag up ahead and it was worth a survey at the very least.

If she had to look where she was going, watch what she was doing, she couldn’t think about what she didn’t know.  She didn’t have all the variables, as Rita would have said. Estelle glanced to the other side of the shrine and caught sight of Rita’s back; the other girl was examining one of the shafts near the elevator, up to her elbows in panels and circuitry.

Estelle shook her head and stepped forward, only to realize too late that she’d made a mistake.

The floor shook underneath her foot and Estelle scuttled backwards with a yelp as the cracks spread out further from where she stepped, deep and sprawling like tiny, jagged canyons. For a moment, she couldn’t do anything but stare because if she’d been only a second later, she might be tumbling down like the stones she’d dislodged.

“Are you okay?” A voice sounded behind her and Estelle turned to see Karol standing there, his hand outstretched slightly as if preparing to grab her.

She breathed.

“Yes,” she replied, “Thank you. Just a little…” she trailed off to eye the cracks again, “I wasn’t thinking.” Well, that was kind of a lie. She’d possibly been thinking too much, and that was why she’d klutzed it.

“I already checked the area thataway,” Karol offered and took a step closer just as Estelle took a step back, away from the shaky spot, “Want to look together until they come back? Unless you, uh, want to hang out by yourself instead. That’s fine too.”

Estelle did not want to hang out by herself and said so with a smile more honest than her first and together, she and Karol began to examine the nearby area. It wasn’t much different than what they’d been doing before but separately, and they didn’t talk much outside of ‘don’t step there’s and ‘watch out for that spot’s and ‘this is fine’s, but it was better than the solitude.

“It’s…” Karol began after a good silence, “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I wonder what’s taking so long.” He shifted uncomfortably and she realized, for the first time, that maybe he was dealing with his nerves the same way she was.

“It’s going to be okay,” Estelle insisted in response with her head down like she was focused on what she was doing instead of what she was thinking, “Yuri’s just fine.” She wasn’t quite sure who she was trying to convince with that one. She didn’t think it was working very well.

Just then, there was a clatter and they all looked up just in time to see Sodia stagger out from behind the massive broken apatheia, looking pale and shaken, and didn’t stop until she was a good ways away from it. On instinct, Estelle approached her and extended a hand to touch her shoulder, squeezing and feeling the minute shakes running through her.

“Are you alright?” she asked, and the other girl recoiled from the contact. “What happened?”

“Did you see Yuri over there?” Karol followed up from her left, and movement on her right said that Judy and Rita had discarded what they were doing to investigate too.

Sodia shook her head violently, to the point where she was afraid she might keel to the side. “I’m fine. Nothing. No.” she answered the three questions quickly as she backed away from Estelle’s outstretched hand and Karol’s curious eyes.

 _Damn it to hell._ How did she think this was going to go? Easily?

Sodia instinctively wiped at her mouth even though she knew that any evidence of her weakness a minute ago was gone. She didn’t know what to do with her words, her hands, her feet, her eyes. The two of them were staring at her and she couldn’t tell if they were being suspicious or worried. She knew she was acting weird and she knew she had to straighten her act up or she would look overly suspicious, but the shaking in her body just wouldn’t stop.

She had just killed a man.

To have run into Captain Schwann of all people first didn’t make that fact any easier to settle with. Even the princess would have been easier…or so she thought. Sodia thought that, at least, Lady Estellise would have been easy to lie to. But now that the princess was standing right here in front of her Sodia thought she might be sick again. She knew how much Princess Estellise cared about Yuri; it was so obvious. The little guild leader as well; he might be young, but from what Sodia knew he wasn’t stupid. He might have had more worldly experience than everyone up on the roof put together, Raven excluded.

Karol would be hard to fool; harder than the princess and here she was with both of them staring at her and it made her feel as transparent as glass.

Oh spirits, they know.

Except there was no way they could possibly know because they didn’t see her and they obviously didn’t know Yuri wasn’t on the roof anymore. She had to distract them; get their minds onto other things.

She had to get her own mind onto other things…

Clearing her throat, Sodia took a look around at the cracks all around them. “It doesn’t look safe over here. We should move further to the edge, it will be more stable where the floor has the support of the outter wall.”

And where was this coming from? Sodia heard her voice and it was calm and collected and authoritative and everything she didn’t feel at that moment. Maybe she was a better liar than she thought? That in itself was scary, she shouldn’t sound like that. She shouldn’t be so good at covering it up… but she was and that was because she knew she had done the right thing. Right?

No, no regrets; she did the right thing. She did her duty as a knight to bring a criminal to justice. She did the right thing for Flynn; for her captain and best friend.

Yuri Lowell had to die.

She just had to keep telling herself that. Remind herself of that pained look Flynn got whenever he argued with Yuri. How Yuri was a murder, liar, and a menace to society. How it was her duty to protect the people, the princess, and her commander from people like him and that now with him gone, Flynn wouldn’t have to be conflicted with right and wrong anymore.

Karol looked up at her and frowned. “You didn’t see anyone?” He obviously wasn’t going to let the subject drop so easily.

“I saw Captain Sch- Raven.” Sodia said taking a step forward. Maybe if she started moving the other two would follow. “He said he was going to look around on that side of the platform.”

A hand caught her and Sodia looked down to see a glove holding fast to her shoulder plate. “It’s dangerous that way,” Lady Estellise said softly. It was obvious she wanted to press the subject and it was taking everything she had to not keep questioning her. “Karol and I were heading over that way.”

Sodia followed where Estellise was pointing and nodded. Distract them. Distract herself. Just…don’t think about _him_.

* * *

 

Across the way Raven was following Repede, stepping over and around debris all while keeping his eyes and ears peeled for any sign of Yuri. Clothing, weapon, hair, a snarky comment. Anything.

Repede seemed to be trying to cover every inch of roof possible; zig zagging back and forth between broken apatheia, pausing here and there, and sometimes retracing his steps only to pause in the same spots he had earlier.

Now Raven was starting to get a knot in his stomach. He knew he was always something of a pessimist, but usually his speculations were exaggerated. This time, he was beginning to fear he was right.

Except there was no more blood seeping out from under any blastia and there weren’t any holes in the floors large enough to swallow a person whole, even though Yuri was skinny enough for the wind to blow him off the roof.

_Off the…?_

Repede whined at his side and suddenly took off straight towards the edge of the shrine. His nose was no longer pointed to the ground and his didn’t waver one bit from his straight path. Raven grabbed a hold of his dagger and jogged after him, to hell with unsteady footing.

That was when he saw it laying on the ground not a foot from the edge. Something long and something shiny enough reflect the sun into his eyes for a brief second.

Repede gave a high pitched bark and stopped to sit down in front the knife laying on the ground and nudged its hilt before sniffing the end and whining again. Kneeling down on one knee Raven could only stare as his pulse began to race. In front of him was a dagger he had seen before. A dagger he had used himself; a standard issue knight dagger with its tip soaked a good four inches deep in blood.

Raven’s heart sank; he didn’t need Repede’s nose to tell him that it was Yuri’s blood.

Repede pushed the dagger towards him with his nose and looked up at Raven before he turned and sat directly on the edge of the roof. The dog stared out at the horizon line and then down, all the way down, to the ocean below and the waves crashing up against the shrine.

His breathing sped up as Raven suddenly felt an emotion he didn’t usually find in himself. Anger. Pure unfathomable anger. His vision tilted to the side and white hazed the corners of his eyes as he put the pieces together; everything sliding perfectly together like a sword fitting into its sheath.

Sodia.

The knight had lied. She had done more than just lie.

Scrambling to the edge on his hands and knees Raven ignored the vertigo he got as he stared down at the crashing white caps somehow thinking that maybe he would see Yuri bobbing around in the water. That Yuri would look up and see him peering over and yell for making him wait so long in the cold salty water.

That distance was too far for words to carry. If Yuri was lucky enough to survive the stab wound (or unlucky enough) the fall would have…

Raven turned, shaking his head, and quickly snatched up the dagger and wiped the blood off on his black pants. No one would be able to see the stain, no one would ask questions about blood. He stuck the knife in his belt under his jacket; deep enough that no one would be able to see it- this was not going to help their situation at all. They might kill him for it later, but right now Raven didn’t care. He had a job to do -keeping chaos to a minimum- and that order just got a lot taller.

_Yuri, you damn fool._

Kneeling back down next to Repede, Raven laid a hand on top of blue fur between twitching ears. “C’mon boy. The others are going to need us.”

Repede let out a small whine as he stood up and followed sticking closer to Raven than the older man could ever remember him being before. They walked slowly so Raven could think about what he was going to say to the others and so he could get his own rushing blood to calm down.

This was the first time in a long time Raven could remember being this mad. He just didn’t get angry anymore; annoyed, sure, but mostly he just went through the motions of the day resigned to his situation. He had almost forgotten what it was like to hear your heart beat in your ears.

Raven paused at the base of the large apatheia where Alexei was still the deadest man in all of Terrica Lumeris, he braced himself against the green smooth surface of the stone with one hand and took a couple of deep breaths. Without thinking he drew his hand back and brought his fist forward with every ounce of emotion he had behind it and ignored the shock of pain the shot up his arm and through his shoulder as his knuckles connected with the blastia.

There he stood frozen for a solid minute before Repede bumped his leg. Raven let his arm drop to his side; not even caring that his fingers were already starting to turn black and blue and looked down at the dog and nodded. “I’m sorry, Repede.”

When Estelle saw Raven and Repede finally come around the other side again, her heart sank down into her feet. They were alone.

Those prayers weren’t answered and it was the same two people to come back that started.

Judith’s hand on her shoulder –when had that happened?- clenched just the littlest bit, the only evidence of nerves in her that Estelle could find, and Estelle… Estelle felt something inside her freeze and frost over.

They were alone. Spirits, they were alone. Raven’s hand was a bruised, bloody mess but she was distracted momentarily by the look on his face, as dark and dangerous as a thunderhead. Repede walked next to him, his own head hanging low and dejected.

There was only one reason why they’d be coming back alone, why they’d look like that—no! No, she wouldn’t think like that, couldn’t. There had to be something else, another explanation, something that Raven couldn’t take care of on his own, something… something that couldn’t be what she was so suddenly terrified of, the something that she couldn’t make herself think.

It took Estelle too long to realize that she wasn’t breathing, took her until her body forced the shallow gasp that filled her lungs, that made her jerk and straighten, that made her blink.

She made to take a step forward but that hand tightened and held her back.

“Estelle,” Judy said with just the slightest edge of warning in her voice, but she may as well have not said anything for all the good it did.

“Where’s Yuri?” she asked tightly from where she stood as Raven approached them, his steps silent and slow, her voice pitching higher and more frightened the closer he came. “Where is he?” A demand, this time, because this had to be some kind of horrible joke. Because there was no way that he was coming back alone, not without Yuri. Because this wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

If it was a joke, no one was laughing. Not even the comedians.

Next to her, Karol looked about as frozen as she did, going milk pale. He didn’t say a thing, even when Judith pressed down harder on the both of them and Rita crossed her arms over her chest, something so obviously like fear making her curl in on herself where she stood.

Estelle still didn’t feel like she was breathing even with air passing her lips.

Raven always had to do all of the icky jobs (though he never said he didn’t _deserve_ the icky jobs): spy, liar, traitor, messenger. Most of the time the latter was the worst job of them all because he never had any good news to deliver. This was going to be one of those times. And for some reason; this time he had a knot in his stomach, which was weird because Raven liked to think he’d become desensitized to giving bad news to people. This time, he really didn’t want to be the messenger. He couldn’t deny it; how invested he had become in this group of kids. He should have realized it sooner; back when the idea of betraying them left a bad taste in his mouth.

He approached the group slowly and tried his best to keep his face as neutral as he could (which was probably a giant failure because when you’re good at not feeling it’s difficult to cover up something you do feel); there was no point in breaking hearts without actually saying anything. Repede walked close to him, only a pace slower with his head to the ground and Raven dipped down to give him a quick pat on the head before stopping in front of the group.

Judy’s hand on Estelle’s shoulder tightened and Raven prayed that the Krityan had a good hold on the princess because he knew first hand that the girl could hit pretty hard when she had a reason.

“Good news is that this ceiling is pretty sturdy under our feet, so no worries about that.” Raven started out quickly. He wasn’t beating around the bush, but he had learned different ways to give bad news and just coming out with it never seemed to be as effective as people liked to think.

Words were an important thing. It took Raven a long time to realize that throughout his life. How you used them, how you said them, the words you chose to speak all had an effect on the people around you. There were times being blunt worked and there were times when you could throw in a little humor. There were times you had to be careful with what you said and there were times where you could throw all caution to the wind and just scream.

Raven chose his words carefully. Not to blunt, but not glossing over the question. “Bad news is I couldn’t find our fearless leader. I’m ‘fraid to say that he’s…not up here anymore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!” It was Karol that responded first, to everyone’s surprise. “How can he not be up here? There’s nowhere else to be except…” Brown eyes drifted to the apatheia and Raven shook his head.

“Don’t get any wrong ideas, the commandant is the only one that’s dead here. I made sure to double-check that.” Raven crossed his arms and waited. There was nothing else he could say; changing the subject would be moot and giving any more details would make the situation even more hazardous than it was already going to become.

And it was going to become a shit storm if his own hand was any indication.

The only thing he could do from here on was to remind them, and himself, that he didn’t find Yuri. He didn’t find him _at all_. No body, no blood and that meant there was a string of hope they could grasp at; Raven just had to make sure he kept that string illuminated for the others.

Even if he was having trouble finding it himself.

Estelle felt the world drop out from underneath her feet and suddenly, it felt like Judy’s hand on her shoulder was the only thing keeping her standing.

Her vision blurred and her head swam and for a moment everyone’s voice became a hum inside her head, the only thing clear being the drumbeats she could feel from her heart to her fingertips.

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right. This couldn’t possibly be right.

Everything was wrong.

She stood stock-still and silent as the tower as it felt like the world fell apart and the air exploded with questions like firecrackers, of _what happened?s_ and _are you sure?s_ and Estelle didn’t realize that her hands were clenching white-knuckled in her skirts, trembling with something she couldn’t name.

They couldn’t find him?

The hold on her relaxed and it was like the blaring of the starting horn, and Estelle moved, ducking underneath Judy’s arm to run full blast towards Raven.

He flinched back just the tiniest bit but running into him (or hitting him) wasn’t her intention; she barreled around him and dodged his hands that meant to hold her back to throw herself around the apatheia…

And there she stopped right where she stood.

Right over there, there was…what remained of Commandant Alexei, and Estelle felt everything she’d eaten threaten to come up as she threw a shaking hand over her mouth. No, no, not throwing up today. She’d seen—well, not worse, actually, but she’d seen plenty as the healer in a group of people who routinely seemed to nearly lose their limbs. This wasn’t that different, just—more. A lot more. And in more pieces than she was necessarily used to. That was what she told herself to keep from heaving and it didn’t work particularly well, but well enough.

The rest of the area was deserted except for the scattered rubble, of pieces of broken blastia and dust.

There wasn’t a sign of Yuri and she found herself staring at what had once been the strong, respected commandant just as Judith caught up to her, grabbing her by the arms and swinging her around to face her.

“Estelle, Estelle,” the older girl demanded, and Estelle couldn’t meet her eyes because there was Alexei and she couldn’t see Yuri anywhere and he was gone and there wasn’t a single sign of where he could be. He was going to be hurt, bleeding, and he couldn’t heal himself as well as he’d need to, and he was all alone—“Estelle, stop looking at that, look at me!”

She couldn’t and a hand forced its way underneath her chin to drag her head up.

“Don’t look at it, Estelle.”

“Yuri’s gone,” she heard herself whisper, “We have to find him. Right now. We have to find him. We have to…we have to—“

Judy forcibly dragged her away from the gore and the wreckage, tugging her around so that all she could see was the grey of wreckage instead of the cresting waves on too-sharp rocks and the horizon line that went on forever and not a speck of land outside of this tower, nowhere to land, nowhere to rest.

“We have to find him,” she insisted, “Judith…”

“I know,” Judy replied, her visage of calm slipping away for just a second, “I know. We’re going to find him. But you need to be calm and you need to think. You don’t have time to panic, understand? Come on, come with me. Come on. Come away from here for now.”

“We need—“

Judy gripped her tightly by the shoulders and shook her once, twice, three times.

“I know, just for now. We need to make a plan, right? You can’t help Yuri without a plan.”

Right. Right, plans were important. Plans were what she was bad at and what Judith was good at. Better than her at the very least, which didn’t mean much. Estelle forced herself to breathe, air coming harshly through her nose and she didn’t protest when she found herself being manhandled around the apatheia, away from the mess, away from the carnage, away from where Yuri wasn’t.

First Karol reached out for Estelle and missed when she went headlong towards Raven and then Raven reached out for the princess and missed as she zipped to the side and out of sight around the apatheia. Raven cringed outwardly; he would have preferred it if she had hit him.

Rita made to follow after Judy took off in a blur of blue, but Raven didn’t miss her. Catching hold of her arm, he spun around to make sure the mage faced the opposite way she was trying to run. “Bad idea.”

“Let go of me!” Tugging hard, Rita tried to pry herself away, but he had a firm hold. “What are you doing? I said let go! Estelle-”

“Not gonna happen.” Raven didn’t even look at Rita as she struggled but kept his eyes on Karol who, thankfully, didn’t look like he was going to take off at the moment. He did, however, look like he had forgotten how to breathe. Time for a distraction. Again.

Or anything that can come close enough to one. “What we need to do right now is figure out a way down from here.”

Karol looked up at him, eyes distant as if he heard him, but didn’t understand what he was saying and Raven knew that look all too well. He’d worn it himself many, many times. A look of abandonment, confusion, disbelief and almost every other emotion related to losing something…someone… a person could have all at once.

“We can’t take the lift?” Rita stilled in his hand and looked up at him quirking an eyebrow up.

Raven shook his head. “It’s jammed. The apatheia fell pretty much right on top of it.” Rita frowned to herself, but started pulling again and Raven turned to see Judy leading a very pale Estelle back around the giant stone. Rita pulled one more time and Raven let her go this time causing the mage to stumble a couple paces before she ran out to meet up with the healer.

Karol frowned and took a few quick sharp breaths. He shook his head as he finally focused his eyes on Raven. “But if we have to get down from here to find Yuri! If he’s not up here then he’s down there and Flynn won’t know to look for him!”

“My captain has better things to do than waste time looking for a murderer.”

Raven flinched as Sodia spoke up from the distance she had been keeping herself from the group. She seemed to have gained some of her composure back, but still looked shaken. He heaved a sigh as all heads turned towards her and he dropped his voice low. It took everything he had to keep his settled anger from spiking again. “That probably wasn’t a very good idea, Lieutenant.”

“If you knew Flynn at all,” Estelle spoke up from where she stood close to Judith as if she could borrow strength from her, body tense and voice steely. Rita was hovering close by, an aggravated frown twisting her lips from Sodia’s words. “You’d know exactly where his priorities will be. Are you a knight or not?”

“He’s a—“

“He’s a civilian,” Estelle interrupted, “You are a knight, and I am the Imperial Princess. Do your job.” Estelle forced herself into silence after the words had been bitten out; the anxiety and fear gnawed on her rarely-seen temper until the edges began to fray and she made a note to at least try to keep her mouth shut, at least until she could better control what came out of it.

From there it was nothing but an absolute, dead silence. Sodia looked as if someone had force-fed her a frog and Estelle leaned just slightly to the side, brushing shoulders with Judith just enough to get her attention. In another situation she might have apologized for her words but not now.

Judy straightened and stepped forward, as calm and composed as if nothing unusual had happened whatsoever.

“Look, fact is, we need to get out of here and the fact is, Captain Flynn is down there either waiting for us or trying to get up. Now, I suggest that we make life a little easier for him and try and find a way down.”

“I saw a place for some stairs down the spire shafts,” Rita spoke up, “I didn’t get a good look but it only makes sense. Elevators always break when you’d need them, and there had to be a way to get up there to fix them or to even build them in the first place.” She pointed in the opposite direction where the battle had smashed parts of the shaft to rubble to reveal a hollowed entrance. “Over there looks like a good place to start.”

“Right,” Judith said, “I like that idea. Certainly a better one than trying to jury-rig the elevator back up to speed.” Rita muttered a little under her breath, something unflattering about Krityans always underestimating pure genius. “Speed, which happens to be something we need.” She shot a pointed look in Rita’s direction; the mage at least had the grace to look slightly mollified if still rather offended. “Shall we?” She directed the question to Raven over Sodia’s head completely, studiously ignoring the other girl with impressive practice.

Raven grinned wide, the corners of his mouth twitching because that was definitely the last thing he wanted to be doing at the moment. “Be my pleasure, Judith, darlin’.” Reaching down he plucked the bow that Karol was still holding for him and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and gave him a little push. “There’s two arches holding this thing up; you and Repede come with me and Judy can take the girls to the other side.”

Karol was more than a little happy to oblige. His feet were practically hurting from restraint. All he wanted to do was run around the edge of platform and yell for Yuri, but Raven wouldn’t lie about that. He had lied about many things and Karol still wasn’t sure whether he’d ever be able to trust the old man again, but Raven wouldn’t lie about Yuri.

At least that was what he had to believe at the moment to keep from completely freaking out.

How Raven and Judy were keeping so calm was beyond him, Then again, freaking out always seemed like it was his most constant state of being. He wasn’t brave like Yuri or experienced like Raven and he didn’t have the ability to keep things under wraps like Judy; he was just trying to keep his head from spinning in circles like his mind was.

First Raven betrayed them, then Raven wasn’t Raven, but Captain Schwann. Then they brought down Heracles and after that Alexei almost killed all of them and injured Ba’ul. So they had to tromp through ice and snow and he almost died trying to fight off some flying fish monster. Then they rescued Estelle only to come to Zaude where they killed Yeager before they fought the commandant… and now they’re here stuck on top of some ancient shrine after Alexei released a giant purple monster that was going to destroy the world and Yuri was missing and he probably fell and he might have been injured and....

And Raven was doing backflips and Judy was being her cryptic self and Estelle was freaking out too and Sodia was there ( _why_ was Sodia there?) and Yuri was down there and they were up here, so Rita’s suggestion to actually move and put his mind to something was (at least for the moment) the best thing Karol had heard anyone say in the past three weeks.

Though, clearly it wasn’t helping with his thought circles. As he followed Raven, next to Repede, he reached out and scratched the dog behind the ears. “Don’t worry Repede, we’ll get down from here soon and then we’ll find Yuri. It’ll be okay. It…has to be okay.”

Raven didn’t make any indication of hearing him and kept walking as Karol looked up at him. Karol knew what was going on in his own head (well what _wasn’t_ going on in his head), he knew what was most likely going on in Estelle’s head and maybe even Rita’s, but Judy and Raven? Not so much. He thought the older man had looked angry earlier, just as he was coming back from the other side of the platform, but Karol had been too focused on the lack of Yuri to really notice.

Did he even care that Yuri was gone? He seemed to be taking everything as if this was just another day on the road, but it wasn’t. They fought and killed the commandant, they lost Yuri, and even after everything they’d done the world _still_ needed saving.

As much as he hated to admit it Karol might understand if Raven didn’t care, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a little more than miffed if that was true.

Once they reached the pillar Raven turned to Karol and put his hands behind his head. “Usually I don’t condone breaking ancient relics, but I bet that hammer of yours can come in handy here.” Whipping a foot out Raven kicked at the fractured cement. A hollow clang resounded from inside and one blue eye winked. “I think we’re onto somethin’.”

Karol nodded as he placed his bag down and hefted his oversized hammer over his head. “Stay back.”

And hammer Karol did; for what felt like an hour. The pillar had been cracked, but it was still sturdier than the shell of a rocktortoise. He pounded away until giant chunks began to fall at his feet and his arms ached and he was covered in sweat. Karol wound up for another swing, but Raven motioned for him to stop and stepped forward to poke his head into the hole. Karol gratefully put his hammer down to watch as he tried to catch his breath.

This had to be it. This had to be the way down; if it wasn’t he might go crazy. He couldn’t just sit up there and do nothing while his best friend, his _best friend_ , was most likely in a world of trouble (typical Yuri). He didn’t save Yuri in that cold tundra just to die from some stupid free fall off a tower.

Raven pulled back scratching his head. “It’s kinda dark in there.”

“Tell me about it,” A grouchy voice echoed from inside the dwelling.

“Flynn!” Karol couldn’t help but smile a little because there in the hollow stood Flynn, scruffy and panting and with a hastily tied layer of bandage wrapped around his shoulder that he might have been bleeding through.

“Flynn?!” Estelle’s voiced pealed across the rooftop as she raced along the edge Rita, Judy, and Sodia at her heels.

“Hey,” he said, eyeing the group of bedraggled adventurers and his own shaken lieutenant, “Is everyone alright?”

There was a weird silence that made something twist in his gut and Flynn hadn’t seen that kind of look on Estelle in…well, he hadn’t seen that kind of look on her ever. He did a brief head count and froze, shifting his stare from Lady Estellise to the nervous little guild leader to Captain Schwa—to Raven. To Raven, who looked him straight in the eye and shook his head quickly. Just a fast, stilted movement that said more than words could.

Hell.

Hell, hell, hell.

Flynn hissed a breath in through his teeth and let it out.

Focus, Scifo, focus. He had to be a captain right now. Had to be a captain for just a few more minutes instead of the friend he wanted to be, because he still had a job to do.

“There’s a clear path back down to the boat,” he said, scrambling out of his hole and making to shuffle the group of people back down into the darkness from whence he’d come, “It’s kind of a wreck too, so just watch out and try not to trip. Shouldn’t be anything too major, though.”

Before stepping back down again, he stopped short.

“…the Commandant?” So much was loaded up into those two little words and he had to ask, even though he knew the outcome solely in the fact that they were still alive. Still alive. Flynn forced back his flinch and Estelle went suspiciously green around the gills without saying a word.

Raven bit back a groan as Flynn turned and eyed the rest of the platform. He was hoping the young captain would get sidetracked just enough not to ask about Alexei. Still, he wasn’t known as the Tightwad Captain for nothing.

Taking a small step forward, Raven ignored Karol pointedly staring at him and Judy trying to usher Estelle through to the stairs. “I’ll be takin’ care of that. Why don’t you go back down with the others?”

Ice blue eyes narrowed at him and Raven couldn’t force any kind of grin or smile or quirk of the mouth as he nodded and motioned for Flynn to follow him with a small wave of his hand. Repede followed, this time sticking close to the blond and the older man suddenly found himself realizing just what was falling over everyone.

Flynn was the only active captain in the imperial knights; the young man was about to become a commandant at an earlier age than Alexei had. Raven’s stomach dropped at the thought; that was more than just one person should be doing. That was _way_ more and he wasn’t going to have any help. Raven would ask if he could help, but he already knew that the answer was going to be no.

_Good luck, kid…_

Flynn was silent as he followed Raven and stared over the remains of what used to be Commandant Alexei, white-faced and tight like an overwound spring. He didn’t slouch an inch, didn’t flinch or throw up or turn away. He didn’t say a word. The only indication that he felt anything was the way his left hand clutched his sword at his side and the other came down to bury shaking fingers in the fur at Repede’s ears, and the way it was like a wall came down over his face.

It was heavy, he thought distantly.

The magnitude of what had just happened was sitting steady on Flynn’s shoulders.

The commandant was dead.

He was the only active captain in the knights. It wasn’t that he was the best option; it was that he was the only option.

Flynn turned his head to look from the wreckage to the group of people hovering by the stairs. Waiting for him. Lieutenant Sodia hadn’t looked away from him the whole while, he knew, and he appreciated her loyalty and concern. He felt unbalanced without Yuri, and just thinking the name made his heart race up into his throat and demand action. But he couldn’t, not right now.

Flynn Scifo had to be steady, even though all he wanted to do was hit something, even though all he wanted to do was push everything else aside and scramble down those stairs to look for his best friend.

That wasn’t even touching how he felt about the man standing next to him. That was something that he wasn’t prepared to deal with, and Flynn was pretty sure that if he tried to, he might just end up punching Raven off the edge of that tower. He regretted the thought as soon as he had it and his stomach lurched in retaliation.

Flynn swallowed bile and gave Repede one more pat on the head, then straightened even more.

“I don’t need to see any more,” he said quietly and didn’t wait for Raven to reply before turning away from him and walking stiffly back to the stairway from which he’d come.

The walk back down was dead silent and Flynn pushed all thoughts of the Commandant and his own short-lived captaincy and Raven, and forced himself to methodically plan out a course of action for what he’d need to do instead of looking too closely at anyone else. It was easy to see the lines and boundaries between his companions, tall and Krityan Judith slightly behind Estelle and Karol with her hands out, like she was herding them, Rita taking in every scrap of information from their surroundings as she could in case she could use it later. Repede had looked from Raven to Flynn for several seconds before making up his mind to follow after Flynn, and hadn’t left his side since.

And then there was Sodia, hovering slightly behind them all, set apart.

There was little room left in him for the guilt at leaving Raven to his task. He didn’t have the room.


	2. Chapter 2

The moment Flynn’s feet hit the bottom step the world froze. Every knight in the hall turned their eyes towards the Captain, waiting for news. Waiting for the story. Waiting to find out what had just made the world go crazy. 

Judy stepped off to the side, dragging a shaky princess along with her while Rita not so  subtly walked along the perimeters to read the walls, stopping here and there to study something more closely. Sodia stood by her Captain's side, watching the silent room and Karol found himself leaning against Repede as the dog sat next to him and if he didn’t know any better, Karol would swear Repede was also waiting for Flynn to speak.

Flynn was unwavering and Karol was somewhere between being in awe of his stoicism and angry that he was just...standing there. But he couldn’t be angry, not at the moment. If Karol was freaking out then Flynn had every reason to be more than freaking out. Alexei was dead and Flynn was...

Oh man. He hadn’t thought of that. Flynn was, single-handedly, the only one who could tell the entire kingdom what to do right now.  _ And I complain about being in charge of a four person and one dog guild?? _ He had no right anymore. No right at all.  

Flynn’s blue eyes scanned the mass of people and took a breath. “Commandant Alexei is dead.” 

Karol blinked. Blunt and to the point. He supposed in this kind of situation there was no beating around the bush.  At least not when a crowd like this was involved. 

So much had to be done. So, so much. There was a monster in the sky and a war about to break out between a kingdom that was now leaderless and the guilds, who were also essentially leaderless. There was Heracles sitting in the bay near Zaphias and...well, Zaphias itself was going to be a giant project after all the aer went crazy and destroyed pretty much all of it.  Entelexeia had to be dealt with and there was still the issue of Estelle and Ioder being up for the throne and--

Then there was Yuri. Yuri, who was missing and at the very bottom of a very long list of things to do. . _ And I know Flynn won’t just leave it alone. Man... _

And now his heart hurt for Flynn. Karol didn’t even think he could comprehend how upside-down the Captain’s world must have just become.

And that’s what it was, wasn’t it? The whole world and everything they thought they knew and were used to was just thrown off a cliff head first and Karol felt like there was nothing he could do to help or making anything better.

_ Yuri would know what to do. He always knows what to do and say and where to be. _ But Yuri wasn’t there anymore and that was something Karol might just have to get used to even though it hurt. It hurt so much and he just wanted to sink into a corner and cry and cry. 

And he was going to if he kept thinking right now. This was not the time to be thinking about mights and maybes and ifs. Turning back to Flynn, Karol listened in to catch unwavering words.

“I want everyone to clear out for now. I don’t know how stable this area is and I until I get to okay from out top engineers no one is to set foot inside this shrine, am I understood?”  Flynn paused, looking for the crowd. 

Silence returned, but there was a wave of nodding heads. Karol glanced up at the ceiling. That was a really really big apathea up there.

Flynn continued, his voiced lowering a little bit. “There is a lot to be done right now. We will retreat outside and I will give further orders to the different units once I have discussed things with Lady Estellise. Dismissed.”

And Estelle looked really surprised at that comment. Karol flinched; she’d probably known Alexei for a long time having lived in the castle. And she probably trusted him and his judgment in a similar way that the guild trusted the Don. Now? She was kind of like Flynn, no leader and suddenly, kind of in charge. 

As the crowd began to disperse Karol stayed where he was, watching Flynn who didn’t move from the bottom step of the staircase as if he was debating on going back up to the roof where Raven was still loitering with, what Karol guessed, what was the world’s most gruesome job anyone could have at the moment.

When did the world get so messed up? He honestly couldn’t remember. And it was useless trying to remember right now. He had to do something. Or he’d burst. 

With a deep breath caught in his lungs Karol walked over to Flynn and looked up at him, his hands gripping the strap to his bag like it was a life buoy. “H...hey, Flynn. I know you’ve got a lot to do and...” He was not going to cry. “Please, let me look for Yuri. Please, he’s still out there. I know it. I know he is.”

And the truth was? He did. He could feel it. Maybe he was delusional. Maybe he was just fooling himself. But in this mess of a moment? It was all he could grab onto. 

Flynn remained stone-still and straight like he'd had iron poured into his spine but at Karol's question his face softened and he looked just a little more like himself. A pained, miserable version of himself, but himself nonetheless. Blue eyes went from mussed brown hair to scuffs on his skin that hadn't been wiped off yet and small strong hands that twisted tightly in his bag strap.

Karol wasn't a child, Flynn told himself firmly. He looked like one and occasionally acted like one but he was a guild leader. Yuri's friend. They hadn't spent much time together but if he'd come this far he had to be strong.

Flynn resisted the urge to bend down to eye level in his desire to not be patronizing.

“You're not my subordinate; I can't order you around or tell you what to do, not even as an Imperial Captain,” he said quietly but firmly, “You're free to do as you like. I'd still rather you didn't go up into the shrine until we get the go ahead but you're welcome to take a boat out and search the waters when it's safe to do so. Please rest up and get some food too, all of you.” He couldn't make himself address the issue of Yuri directly just yet; hope burned in his chest right along with the grief that left him cold.

He'd lost what felt like everything, his commandant and the captain whom Flynn had admired and emulated. They were both gone, both dead in different ways, and both of them had betrayed him. Flynn wouldn't let himself do that to someone else, not to Yuri or to Yuri's guild who could be his family.

Who were his family.

Karol swallowed hard, clenched his jaw, and nodded. His grip on his bag went white-knuckled and then loosened.

“I understand. Thank you, Flynn.”

And then everything was a bustle of activity, with Flynn delegating orders for the immediacy and trying to get everyone who wasn't strictly necessary off of the shrine and into the gigantic boat that waited outside.

That done, Flynn looked around and sought out Estelle.

He needed to speak with her sooner rather than later; she was the only royal this side of the world and, truth be told, with the guilds essentially out to dry as in terms of leadership, it was up to the two of them to keep their people together the best they could. He found her easily by finding Judith up against the railing; the tall Krityan girl stood straight with her hand resting solidly on Estelle's shoulder. Whether as reassurance or to keep her from bolting, Flynn wasn't sure.

He approached anyway and the both of them came to attention, Judith merely lifting her head in acknowledgment but Estelle giving a full-bodied jerk. He thought briefly that he must have startled her and prepared an apology, but realized seconds later that she wasn't surprised so much as she was vibrating with tension instead like she couldn't stand still.

“Lady Estellise,” he greeted her and stepped forward. “If you have a few moments to spare...”

She twisted her hands.

“Yes, of course,” she replied and stepped away from the railing, away from Judith, to stand by his side. Nevertheless, her head cocked and she furrowed her brows at her friend. “Judith...?”

“Go on.” Judy made a shooing motion with her hands, “I need to speak with Ba'ul. We'll eat when you get back.”

“Rita...” Estelle began.

“She'll be there too.” Judy repeated her little shooing motion. “Go on.”

Estelle let out a breath of something like relief and Flynn took another look at Judith, closer but not  harder. She looked tired just like all of them but in a different way. More subdued than antsy, composed in contrast to the frenetic energy and near panic of almost everyone else. Like a buoy on the waves.

Like a captain who knew who she had to look out for.

Flynn shut that thought down hard before refined voices he didn't want to hear started echoing in his head and he and Estelle began to walk away, towards the door that led to the lower levels of the boat.

“I wish this could wait until you were more rested but I'm afraid that it can't.”

Green eyes shuttered.

“No, I agree.”

There was an office below deck and the soldiers parted and scurried out of their way as they walked towards it, down stairs and past storerooms and through hallways. Flynn pushed the door open to allow Estelle to enter first. It was a nice office with a beautifully polished hardwood desk and luxurious chairs but he was pretty sure that neither of them were in any state to appreciate any of it.

“Flynn, I haven't been trained for this,” she said right off the bat once the doors were closed. “No one ever...I don't know how to run a country.” It wasn't an excuse or a refusal, just an admittance of the truth. Flynn knew as she did now that had things gone in the direction of the council, Estelle would have remained a pretty figurehead on the throne to be manipulated. Ioder knew economics, knew strategy, knew the mechanics of running a country. He knew the things that he'd need to know. He'd have been prepared.

But...

“I know you haven't.” And Flynn hadn't been trained for being a commandant. Apparently it was time for all of them to start jumping into too-large boots that they weren't ready for. “But you're here and people need you. So we'll have to do the best we can.” Do the best they could with one untrained commandant and one untrained princess and no Yuri at all.

Estelle grit her teeth. Flynn half expected her to flinch or look away but she didn't say no. Flynn felt something loosen inside him, just a tiny bit, even though he knew that she'd never turn him down.

“Right,” she said eventually. “Let's do this.” And she didn't wait for him to move; Estelle reached for the rolled maps and bound stacks of paper and flipped through them. Flynn knew that the scholar in her was trying frantically to memorize every word that she should have been shown before something like this happened.

Flynn watched her and that loosened something bound back up inside his chest.

“Lady Estellise,” he began and unconsciously his hand crept forward as if to touch her shoulder. “About Yuri...”

Estelle met his eyes straight on. Her green ones were tired. Flynn wondered what his looked like.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I'll do what I need to do. I believe in Yuri, Flynn. I believe in him and that he's out there somewhere and I'll never stop. Not until he comes home.”

Flynn wasn't sure if that was supposed to make him feel better, but he couldn't deny the knot of tension that clenched in his gut at her words. He wasn't one to be moved by speeches though he oft understood the need for pretty ones but something about the way she said it stuck with him.  The problem wasn't that he thought she was lying or being deceitful. Not at all.

The problem was that he believed her to the absolute letter.

Nevertheless, he didn't press the issue and instead turned to one of the scrolls. He unrolled it on the desk and tacked down the corners. It was huge and took up nearly the whole desk.

“Alright, your highness. Let's get started.”

* * *

 

Boats were always an interesting thing to be on. They were cramped and small and it wasn’t long before you found yourself over familiar with every corner, crack, and creaking floor board. But at the same time they were freedom. The ability to go anywhere in the world and bring people and things to places they had never been. The were a place for camaraderie and somewhere you had to work in harmony with everyone or you’d never survive. 

This boat, however, was a prison. 

And the only thing Sodia wanted to do was fling herself over the railing and swim away  that boat even if she’d never make it to the mainland before exhaustion caught up to her.  She flinched every time someone looked at her and her blood froze solid anytime someone spoke to her. And no one every asked anything or said anything out of the ordinary. Reporting in on tasks they had completely or asking questions about what to do next. They were harmless words, but she still panicked. 

She felt like everyone knew what she’d done. She felt like everyone could see right through her and while she new it wasn’t true it was making her crazy. Absolutely crazy.; so she (for the first time ever) didn’t get permission to leave her post from outside Flynn’s meeting with Lady Estellise (which was really an official post so why would she need permission to leave) and ignored questions as she walked off the boat back to the cracked husk of a building that was the Shrine of Zaude.

Maybe they hadn’t gotten the okay for safety and maybe that bloody mess up on the roof wasn’t entirely cleaned up, but right now? Sodia just....couldn’t stay on that boat. 

She couldn’t keep going like this. She’d break. Break into a million different pieces and no one would be able to figure out how to put her back togther because right now? Sodia was pretty sure she couldn’t put herself back together. 

She’d killed Yuri Lowell. She had to do it, she believed that with every fiber of her being, but she still felt like a hypocrite. Wasn’t the whole reason she hated him in the first place because he had killed people? He had taken justice into his own hands and delt out his own punishment and authority when he didn’t have any authority to begin with. He was a low life thug who was in a guild (and those things were an entirely different topic in themselves) and thought that the world’s views didn’t apply to him. Citizen or not the rules still applied and since the guilds didn’t seem to want to dish out any kind of punishment for Yuri taking the life of two of the Kingdom’s highest ranking officers-- no, three. The Commandant was included in that. Yes, Alexei had definitely gone down the wrong path; done things he should not have done, but that definitely wasn’t Yuri’s problem.

No, and that’s why Sodia had made her decision up there on that roof. Watching Yuri and the princess and the rest of that sad group of misfits fight a man they had no right to be fighting. Maybe she could justify Lady Estellise, maybe, but in the end she was a princess and she shouldn’t have to lift a finger towards the man that had harmed her. That was for the knights to do. It was the knights’ duty to pass down judgment on their wayward commandant. 

Not a princess’. Not a traitorous captain’s. Not a book worm mage from Aspio. Not Brave Vesperia’s. Not Yuri’s. 

It was her duty and Flynn’s. 

Yuri needed to stop sticking his nose into things that weren’t his problem just because he felt that he was right or that his “justice” was better for everyone involved. Well, he wouldn’t be anymore.

And Sodia actually felt an accomplishment in that. She just wasn’t sure if that was something she should be scared of or not. In her mind, she knew she shouldn’t be. It was the right thing to do. Yuri messed things up in the past and he would just keep on doing so in the future. He was a murderer and a thief and didn’t have faith in the Kingdom and he had already started down a path of ultimate crime. Being in a guild would just make it easier for him to accomplish more terrible things. She had given him his just deserves. If he had been tried for killing Ragou and Cumore and kidnapping Lady Estelise he would have been sentenced to death.

At least, if Flynn wasn’t involved. Because whenever Flynn was involved Yuri could get away with...well murder.  And that’s why she did what she did, end of story. It was for the best and Flynn might not see that. He might mourn for his friend and be angry over his death (because he might be very good at hiding it, but that silent tremble he’d been trying to conceal did not go unseen by her) but in time Flynn would see. He would see that without Yuri he could truly be the great man he was destined to be. That there wouldn’t be anyone holding him back.

It would just take time, but in the end he would accept it. 

Right? Right

“Lieutenant?”

Sodia stopped and started. When had she trekked so far into the shrine and who was-

“Captain Schw-” No, not anymore.  _ Traitor _ . “What are you doing here. Civilians aren’t supposed to be in here until we say it’s okay.” 

“Well someone has to do some initial clean up or it’s just gonna be messier later on.” Shifting from his kneeling position on the floor the older man sank back onto his heels. His pink jacket was smudged with blood and his face was distinctly paler than she could ever remember seeing it; even after standing by the Commandant’s-

No, not going to think about that. Her empty stomach rolled and she bit back a dry heave.

And that’s when Sodia saw the body next to Raven. Only this one was whole and laying in a relatively small pool of blood and it was a man not in armor and much thinner and taller than Alexei. 

Yeager. She remembered catching a glimpse of him in Heliord when they had stumbled across that labor camp... Well stumbled across it after the Princess’ group had, but they were still the ones that cleaned up the mess.  Not to mention they had run right by his body in their attempt to catch up with Yuri and the princess and Alexei. They just hadn’t really paid any attention to the dead guild master.

What business did he have being in the shrine in the first place? How did he even-

Well that was a stupid question. Yuri just killed another man. And maybe this guy wasn’t a citizen of the Kingdom and yeah, he was bad (at least he had to be judging from everything Sodia had heard about him), but there he went, a lone vigilante trying to impose his own justice on someone when it wasn’t his right. It was a guild matter; not a Yuri Lowell matter.

Yeah, she really did do the right thing. 

Sodia crossed her arms, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “What do you intend to do with him?”

Tired eyes looked up at her and a subtle eyebrow raised towards the bowed ceiling. “What’s right by me and by him. Yager, like the Commandant, is still a person and still deserves respect for the good he accomplished in his life. Even if it was a long time ago.”

_ Hmph. _ Well that was the biggest load of nostalgic bullshit Sodia had ever heard. And it wasn’t like this guy, Raven, had any right to be talking about good deeds. He was a traitor to the Kingdom- almost as much as Alexei was and here he was walking around talking about giving respect to people who were the least deserving of it?

Not going to happen.

Shaking her head Sodia turned on her heel. This was not important right now. She should be checking with the engineers to see if it was safe to go back into the shrine. They needed to find a way to get rid of that monster in the sky. They needed to figure out how to fix the Kingdom.

She needed to focus and stop thinking about what’s gone for good. Both the good and the bad. 

Clothing rustled behind her as Raven stood. “Lieutenant, before I forget.” A soft steps were all Sodia had before a woosh of air told her that the older man was right behind her. “I found something earlier that I think belongs to you. You might have dropped it in all the chaos.”

_ What?  _ She wasn’t aware that she was missing anything; she’d have noticed right away. She wore the same thing and carried the same items everyday. “You must be wrong.” Sodia turned to glance down at Raven’s extended hand. “I’m not-”

The air caught in her throat and Sodia choked. Breathe. Breathe, Breathe, dammit! 

Raven’s steady hand was palm up cradling her dagger. Her dagger. Her dagger that had a small chip in the handle and a slightly blunt back edge because she only sharpened the point. Her dagger that was slightly tarnished from patrols in the rain. Her dagger that she had covered in blood and dropped on the floor of the ceiling. 

Only the blade was clean. 

_ He knows. _

* * *

 

Raven was left alone with a hasty excuse that the dagger could not possibly be Sodia’s (because hers was lost on Heracles) and orders to finish up and remove the body before it became an issue. 

_ Sure, easy for her to say. _ He’d been the only one on body duty that afternoon and Raven was pretty sure that despite his usual stomach of steel he wasn’t going to be eating for the next couple of days. Gross factor aside he just...wasn’t going to be in the mood. No one was. 

And sure, who could blame them? Monster in the sky, traitorous Commandant, destroyed capital, best friend missing. Yuri might not be Raven’s best friend, but even he was beginning to feel the pull of tragedy in a young life being snuffed out so early. 

Assuming of course that Yuri Lowell was, in fact, dead. Which all logic and sense pointed to the fact that he really couldn’t be anything other than; there was still some flicker of hope that maybe -just this once?- Raven was wrong. He actually liked being wrong. He'd known that Alexei would stray from the path of humanity a long time ago, just as he'd known the instant their group had run into Yaeger in that shimmering blue room that the Guild Master was going to die. Just like he'd known that he would, somehow, outlive all the people that had once mattered so much to him. 

So it was with a swimming head, trying to scoop through his own emotions and thoughts, that Raven wrapped up Yaeger in his own bloodied jacket and contracted a couple of knights to take him to a secluded room on a smaller boat that Raven might be able to commandeer back to Dangrest for a short time. And it was then that Raven realized he didn’t really know what to do next. 

He was probably the last person the knights wanted to see right now and Flynn...well that was going to be a painful conversation in many ways and while Raven knew he had to confront the young commandant he just didn’t know if he was up for it now.  Besides, the world rested on that young man’s shoulders and the last thing Flynn Scifo needed to do was to get distracted by a traitorous captain. So he sat on the broken steps to the shrine, his boots resting on a submerged stair, and just listened to the waves that tapped against his feet.

“There you are,” Judith’s sing songy voice echoed out from the darkness behind him and Raven leaned back on his elbows and hung his head upside down to meet her eyes and soft smile. “Karol’s been looking for you.”

“Has he?”

The Krityan took a seat a couple stairs up from Raven and propped her elbows onto her knees. “Yes, he wants to put together a search party.” 

Raven chuckled despite himself. Karol would never cease to amaze him and at least that was something Raven could count on indefinitely. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”

“I thought so too. I might even see if Ba’ul is up to helping us.” 

Raven nodded once, his bangs falling in to his eyes. Suddenly, the ocean in front of him looked a whole lot bigger. And darker. And choppier. And scarier with its purple greenish glow from the Adaphagos in the sky. 

And from there a silence fell between them and a tension in the air as if neither of them wanted to be the one holding the needle that would pop the balloon that held everyone’s hopes for Yuri’s survival. For the future of their world.

“How’s everyone holdin’ up?” Raven asked as more of a formality than anything. He already knew the answer. Why couldn’t he just be wrong?

“Estelle and Flynn have been locked up for hours, but you know her. The pomp and circumstance is only going to last so long before she flings herself off the side of that boat and swims the perimeter of this place.” 

Oh, so true. “Then after we force a good meal on everyone in the morning I’d say we better get that search party underway before we have a very soggy princess on our hands.” 

“I agree.” 

Judy shifted and Raven thought she was going to get up. Her news delivered, she really didn’t need to stay around and make awkward small talk with him. But then a delicate hand came to rest on his shoulder and Raven jumped in surprise as he twisted to raise a confused eyebrow at her. 

“I’m really sorry for your loss, Raven.” 

The air caught in his throat momentarily and all Raven could do was stare. Leave it to Judy to flip him upside down in a world that was already on its head. Because that was what it boiled down to at the moment, wasn’t it? 

The reason he was out there on those wet steps thinking about nothing in particular was because he didn’t want to think about it all.

The fact that he had lost two of his best friends in one day;two people who he had grown with, gone to war with, and had fallen from grace with. That no one would really understand why he would be the only person in the world mourning these two deaths. 

That he held hope for Yuri’s survival because accepting it would probably be just enough to shut him down and that was the last thing anyone needed right now. 

“Thanks.” Was all he could manage as she squeezed his shoulder and stood up to walk off back towards the boat.

* * *

 

Karol thought that it would have been harder to sleep than it was but even so, he woke up the next morning and didn't feel rested at all. He didn't toss and turn, he didn't dream, and if not for the fact that six or seven hours had passed he wouldn't have been able to tell that he'd slept at all. He didn't feel like he had, anyway.

Estelle had been locked up in Flynn's office for most of the night and when she finally came out, Judy had hustled her, Rita, and Karol himself off to bed.  Karol had protested halfheartedly even though he knew it was a wasted effort and had fallen into bed almost immediately, barely managing to take his boots off in the process.

Nevertheless he awoke with a start.

His first thought was that this wasn't where he normally slept. Normal at this point was a tent or one of the storerooms on the Fiertia that they used to pile up their bedrolls because there were literally two beds on the entire boat. Normal was his sleeping bag around the remnants of what used to be a campfire. Normal was, every so often, a bed in an inn.

This wasn't normal.

His second thought was that he absolutely had to find Yuri. As soon as possible. By today. As soon as possible. If he'd had his way, they'd have been out looking yesterday.

By the time he'd cleaned up a bit and arrived at the mess hall, it was already filled with people. Flynn was nowhere to be seen (which wasn't surprising; the guy had a lot to do and had probably been up since who even knew when), but Judy and Rita and Estelle were already seated. Rita's plate was already empty and she was scritching away at a notepad; Judith's was much the same. Estelle's was still half full.

“Good morning,” Karol greeted them, his own voice sounding foreign to his ears. Had it really only been yesterday that the world had gone upside-down?  He didn't want to look outside and see purple tentacles stretching across the world like giant fingers trying to engulf the planet. The world had changed enough; he didn't know if he had room to think about the rest of it.

“Morning, shorty.”

_ Good morning to you too, Rita. _

At least her snark was expected.

“Oh, good morning!” Estelle looked relieved to have an excuse to quit pushing her scrambled eggs around and avoided Judy's pointed stare that promised that this wasn't over. “How are you feeling?”

_ Sore. _ Karol didn't say. In-battle healing was fast and messy even by someone who knew what they were doing and even the hasty post-fight looking over that Estelle had given everyone before they realized Yuri's disappearance hadn't been thorough enough to erase the residual aches. What he didn't say didn't much matter, however, because he flinched when he sat down and Estelle reached out for him anyway.

“I'll be okay,” he told her before she could do anything, “It's just some achiness. You should save your magic for something that matters--”

She ignored him and the bone-deep throbbing disappeared, leaving only a loose warmth in its place. 

“That's exactly what I'm doing,” she said firmly.

Karol rubbed his shoulder, looked down, and found a plate in front of him. Where had Judy been keeping that? Nevertheless it was still hot and steaming and Karol dug into it, suddenly ravenous. The eggs were tasty, the toast crunchy and slathered with the kind of jelly he liked, the sausage spicy and surprisingly good for military food. Maybe it was because of the captain? Or should he start thinking of Captain Flynn as the commandant, now? Estelle ate too but slowly under a hawk-eyed Krityan stare but steadfastly avoided the meat.

And then the whole room was at attention and Karol looked up just as Flynn slid down into the seat next to them, Repede behind him and settling down on the floor underneath the table.

“Good morning.”

Flynn looked like he hadn't slept much and Karol felt like kicking himself for the thought. Of course he hadn't! He'd spent most of the night trying to find a way to put the country back together and even then Karol didn't want to think about everything else he had to do.

Of course he hadn't slept. Duh.

Nevertheless his uniform was immaculate and perfectly put together and he'd brushed his hair which was more than Karol had done. 

Flynn drummed his fingers on the table.

“Since we've all had a few hours rest, I thought I'd come talk to you about search parties. Cap—Raven came back earlier and has yet to give his report but I think it's safe to say that I can clear the area for searches.”

The second the word 'search' was out of his mouth all of them (even perpetually serene Judy) straightened in their seats. Karol's stomach rolled as he thought about his friends. Estelle was obviously still tense and jittery, Rita even more invested in her research than usual as if her sheer will would tip the balance in her favor, and Judy...she wasn't showing it but she was watching out for them like she hadn't ever had before.

Or maybe Karol just hadn't ever had a reason to notice it before now.

He wasn't sure which was worse.

And then there was Raven, who he hadn't seen at all since they'd all left him atop Zaude. Karol hadn't seen him at all and he felt a spike of what felt like guilt join the anxiety in his belly. Raven was another subject that he didn't want to focus on. It was too hard, too complicated, and Karol hadn't even begun to sort out his feelings on that one.

They needed to find Yuri.

“Ba'ul and I will search the area from the sky,” Judy said as less of an offer and more of a demand. Of course she would. Karol caught her eye and felt a candle of hope light in his chest. They'd do this, he told himself firmly. They were Brave Vesperia and they never gave up, and Karol was determined to find Yuri with everything he had.

“I can take a boat out too,” Karol said. He'd been a member of a sailing guild for a few months before he'd joined the Hunting Blades; that and inevitably meant that he knew enough to get around. Flynn nodded immediately and glanced to Estelle, who swallowed.

“If it's alright with you, I'd like to go up and search the shrine. I know that it's been checked already but—I won't be as much good on a boat and Judy can see much better from the air than I can.” 

“I want to check out the shrine too,” Rita interjected, “So we can go together. And the more I know about it, we might be able to figure out what to do about...” she waved her hand in the general direction of the sky, clearly referring to the giant purple tentacles in the sky.

Again, Flynn nodded.

“Right, that sounds good. Just be careful, there might still be some shaky parts.”Just then, a knight with a clipboard and a stack of papers called his name and Flynn got to his feet. “Debrief me when you get back, please.” And then he was gone in a bustle of movement and again, Karol was torn between admiration and resentment for his ability to stay cool. He didn't envy the position he was in, though, that made him have to act like that.

Karol pushed away his plate and stood as well.

“Okay,” he told his teammates, “Lets do this. Brave Vesperia, move out!”

* * *

 

Karol’s enthusiasm was cute. The way his eyes lit up when Flynn suggested they form parties to search for Yuri and the way he got all determined when he was told he could take out one of the smaller boats with a small unit of military men. How he told Judy what to look for from atop of Ba’ul and just how far she should fly before turning around and flying the opposite direction for just as long and far. 

It was cute. And pretty sad. 

But Rita hadn’t said anything. She usually knew when it was a bad time to open her mouth and while most of the time, she ignored her own conscience’s advice, this time? No, she was just going to fade into the background and smile when she needed to and agree when it would make someone slightly less depressed.

Because how do you tell the first friend you’ve ever made that her best friend was dead? 

Yuri might be the king of surprises, always zigging when you expected him to zag and jumping when he should duck and still making it out alive and on top, but he wasn’t super human. Bohdi Blastia around his wrist or not, no person would ever be able to survive that fall.  That was human science plain and simple. There was no magic in the world that could have saved him even if they had seen it coming because people don’t fly.

They fall victim to the world and it’s laws. 

The Adaphagos was proof enough of that. Even a civilization hundreds of years ago that was eons more advanced than Rita and those around her could ever be, couldn’t get rid of it. They just hid it, locked it behind some glass wall and now there was a crack in that wall and everyone was going to suffer the fate that those in the past simply pushed off themselves. 

Of course it took a giant tentacle monster in the sky for people to realize they were a little too high on their pedestals, hiding behind barrier blastia. Just because with blastia they could jump a little higher or wield a sword a little better or control magic didn’t mean they could beat the laws of life.

Because they can’t and that ego is what gets everyone killed in the end.

_ Stupid Yuri.  _

Stupid Yuri and stupid Flynn for giving everyone hope that they might find him and stupid her for playing along. Because she was stuck on a roof with Estelle whose heart was the last she could ever consider breaking, but at the same time? Standing around and watching it break as she realizes the truth?

Worse. So much worse.

Worse than watching the princess pace around the top and peer over the edge every couple of feet. Her mind wasn’t anywhere near the monster in the sky. It was in cold, blue water below. 

So Rita had to be the one to focus on the solvable problem at hand (well the hopefully solvable) because if no one else was going to be thinking about the Adaphagos than she had a lot of work ahead of her. She really needed to get back to Aspio, but what was a couple more days at the shrine? Research on the biggest blastia to have ever existed...

...and maybe the ability to be there once her friends realized the truth. Most the former though. 

_ Yeah, research. That’s why  I’m still here. _

Unaware of Rita's silent contemplation, Estelle was doing her level best but she'd had no luck yet. The shrine was still a wreck and she and Rita had been up and looking for going on three hours now. Rather, she'd been looking and Rita'd been looking and periodically looking up at the sky. It's awful, she thought, and felt queasy every time she saw a streak of purple out of the corner of her eye. She couldn't help but see it even though she wasn't not really looking for it.

Estelle was looking for any hint, any little clue that Yuri might still be around here somewhere.

She couldn't think of what no one will say around her. 

She can't.

Yuri was alive, she just had to find him. Wherever he was, someone had to find him. If it couldn't be her then she'd do her best to help whoever could. So help her, if she was good for anything at all, she'd find him and help bring him home. She looked over the edge of the shrine, stared at the waves that crashed against and lapped violently at the sides of the shrine.

_ It's so far down _ .

Estelle shook her head rapidly back and forth to clear it and step-sped-away from the crumbling edge. The area had been cleared as safe but that only went so far as common sense allowed. All the safety in the world couldn't do anything against clumsy footfalls or distraction.

She kicked over a chunk of broken blastia and made her way back to where Rita was standing. The mage took notes in her pad, chewing on her pencil, and just generally looked unsatisfied. Estelle could empathize. 

“Hey, Rita?” she said quietly, raising her voice a little to carry over the slight whistle of the wind.

Rita looked up.

“Yeah?”

Estelle sidled up to her and didn't look down at the water, where she knew Karol was bobbing around in the small boat that Flynn gave him. She hoped that he was safe and that he was having more luck than she was.

“Thank you,” she said, and bumped Rita gently with her shoulder. “For coming with me.”

_ Urk, and there she goes getting all sappy again. _ Rita wasn’t very good at sappy. It was for people who actually cared about other people. It was for people who worried about other people. It wasn’t for her. She came up here to look at blastia and figure out how to get rid of the Adaphagos. Sure, maybe she asked Estelle to come along because letting her do anything else right now might break the princess in half, but...that was it. Right?

“Who came with who? I was going to head up here anyway.” Rita said with as much feigned innocence as she could muster. “Someone has to figure out how to get rid of that monster in the sky.”

And maybe this wasn’t the time to be making really bad dry humored jokes, but Rita honestly had no idea how else to handle the situation. She had a fragile princess in one hand and all the science in the world racing around in a jumbled mess in the other and there was just no way to balance it all out.

Console the people she’d traveled with for the past six months after losing their leader and friend or answer all the questions racing around in her head about tentacle monsters in the sky and massive apatheia made from people in the past? Oh yeah, that was one question she couldn’t answer through scientific deduction.

Estelle just looked hurt and lost and Rita didn’t know what to do. Mostly because no one’s ever consoled her about anything. The reason for that? She’d never needed it. Thinking back she really couldn’t remember a time when she was genuinely broken up over something. Minus maybe someone stealing her work and getting credit for it.

People had tried in the past, mostly when she was younger. When she arrived in Aspio alone before she was even a teenager. But it didn’t take long for them to realize she didn’t want it or need it and from then on they just left her to her own devices. 

And that was that.

Then Yuri had to show up and accuse her of stealing his stupid blastia and Estelle had to be so polite when they had broken into her house. And Karol had to be...Karol. And that’s when her life got complicated because they proved to her that maybe people could be trusted.

That they wouldn’t just leave you high and dry. Except...now Yuri was gone and he had left them all hanging onto one another. Damn it all. 

“Estelle.” Pink hair blew over green eyes as the wind picked up. “You’ll find him.” 

Estelle released a breath she didn't realize she was holding.

It was such a simple statement, so blunt and frank and so very Rita, and she hadn't known that she'd needed it until she heard the words. For a second, just a second, the tension slipped out of her and left nothing in its place, and she staggered. Estelle caught herself, then, and hoped it looked like little more than a nervous twitch but Rita was sharp and all she could hope for was that she wouldn't call her on it.

Hope blossomed in her stomach and warmed her from the inside out and Estelle couldn't resist the urge to reach out for Rita's hand and squeeze briefly, even though Rita went red and flustered as she always did. Estelle didn't know much about Rita's past, no more about her secrets than she knew about Karol's or Judy's or Yuri's or Ra—or Raven's, but she knew that Rita had about as much experience with friendship as Estelle herself, which was to say next to none. She expressed the lack differently than Estelle did, that was all, but it was obvious to anyone who looked.

Estelle suddenly remembered her sword and spells cutting into the people she loved so dearly and abruptly stopped thinking about it.

She needed to keep that hope going, not just for her but for everyone else too.

Estelle smiled.

“Right,” she said, and blew on hope like a flame to make it burn. “Of course we will.”

There was no other option she could accept.

* * *

 

It was a rare, rare moment now that Flynn got any sort of reprieve at all from anything normally, much less when the world was falling apart around him but he'd hit a roadblock suddenly that he hadn't seen coming, like he'd slammed into a wall that hadn't been there before. Flynn was used to long hours, to commanding others, and of course making sure that the things he couldn't do himself were up to speed but this was insane. Since getting up this morning he hadn't stopped at all, not like he'd slept much anyway. Most of the evening had been spent talking things over with Estelle and that only ended when he realized that the door to his office was open a crack and Judith was pacing calmly back and forth in front of it. Her face was serene as it had been nearly the entire time but when she caught his eyes her gaze was hard and demanding, and Flynn had let Estelle go.

Since then he'd been running around like a headless chicken.

Everyone needed something and thank goodness for Sodia who made an effective go-between, but she could only do so much and Flynn was losing his mind.

As it stood now, he'd managed to scrape together a sandwich and a very large cup of very dark coffee that sent energy boiling through his veins but with a side-effect of lending shakes to his fingers when he stared at them too long.

Flynn Scifo prided himself on an open door policy and as always, the door was open despite the situation.

He was simply hunkered down underneath his desk so as to not be seen by anyone who happened to enter and was hoarding the first ten minutes he'd had to himself in the last...he didn't even know how long it had been anymore since things were normal.

Normal, huh?

Things were never going to be normal again.

The door swung open wider and Flynn prayed to everything that whoever had come in hadn't heard his munching and that his coveted hiding place hadn't been discovered by a newbie. He chanced a split-second look underneath the very bottom of his desk to check the shoes of whoever had come in.

Boots, he noted. Boots covered in greaves.

Krityan boots.

Shit.

Unthinkingly Flynn made to stand and cracked his head on hardwood, letting out a stream of muffled profanity.

Judith did her best to ignore the smirk tugging at her lips and simply smiled as the commandant stood, placing a half eaten sandwich on the desk and rubbing his head a little before running his fingers through his hair like he’d meant to do that all along. He didn’t let go of the coffee, though.

_ Yes, I believe my timing is perfect. _ Flynn looked...well as bad as you’d expect, if not worse. Pale in the face minus the dark circles that encompassed his eyes and his usually bouncy blonde hair was looking a little flatter (and darker) than normal. He held onto his cup of caffeine like it was the only thing keeping him standing and Judy didn’t have to guess that it probably was. But the way his hands were white knuckled and shaking only meant that the commandant needed...a break. 

Meeting icy eyes Judy smiled the best she could. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything too important.” She eyed the sandwich and cup of coffee.

Flynn’s eyes just narrowed in response. Always so suspicious. Not that she was ever going to blame him for that. She’d be constantly questioning things too if she had been Yuri’s best friend since...well she didn’t really know but it had to have been a long time. Which was why she was here.

Because all outer appearances aside Judy knew; Flynn Scifo was driving himself into the ground. It wasn’t enough that he was now in charge of an entire Kingdom along with Estelle. It wasn’t enough that he was partially to blame for the chain of events that lead up to the release of the Adaphagos and yes, she knew no one would ever say that to his face, but she knew it was on his mind, because it was true (as harsh as that was and she knew only Raven and herself would ever have the gall to point that out). It wasn’t enough that he was tired and probably still hurting from that shot to the shoulder.

Yuri was missing too and that was exactly what was sending the young commander over the edge. But since this was Flynn, he would never admit it. “I’ll take that as a no?”

Flynn took a sip of his coffee and flinched a little. Oh yes, he’d definitely been drinking too much.  At least it was only coffee. “It’s fine, Judith. My apologies.” 

“Good, because you’re coming with me.” Reaching out her arms one grabbed the sandwich and the other the cup of coffee. As she tugged on the mug Flynn started forward and she quickly swapped the two out setting the steaming drink on the desk and quickly grabbing the fabric just under a shoulder guard and pulling the blonde towards the door.

“J...Judith!” Flynn stuttered as he stared down at the sandwich and then glanced back longingly at his coffee. “I-”

“Hm?” Judy let go of Flynn’s arm and he stopped dead and winced as the sun hit him. His office on the ship was so close to the deck and yet he looked pretty surprised at how high the sun was. “That’s what I thought. I want you to meet someone. Come on.”

She just waved for him to follow this time and it wasn’t long before armored boots tapped along side her. She knew he’d follow once she got him outside. Any single person can only focus on saving the world for so long before you had to take a break. If Estelle hadn’t been kidnapped she was going to suggest as much to Yuri and the others in Myorzo. Fate had other ideas.

Very, very different ideas. 

Flynn stared balefully behind him as he somehow found himself being pulled along by the shoulder, abandoning his coffee. It was probably for the best, the logical part of him commented, but the rest of him that was relying on that coffee protested vehemently. And what if someone came around to look for him and couldn't find him? What if he missed something important? What if they found Yuri?

Thoughts of his coffee went flying out the window the moment Flynn thought that name and any resistance he might have put up withered on the vine in the face of Krityan persistence. Again, the logical part of him won out.

He couldn't do this by himself.

If anything happened while he was gone, that was what his lieutenants were for. If he couldn't trust them in his stead, who could he trust at all?

And the sun did feel kind of nice...

Flynn wasn't sure when he shifted from being abducted to walking at Judith's side but it wasn't long before he couldn't resist his curiosity.

“Who am I meeting, exactly?” As far as Flynn knew, he'd met and greeted everyone in Yuri's company from the princess he already knew to Judith, to the little guildmaster, to the grouchy little mage who'd glued herself to Estelle's side to Ra—to Raven. Even in his mind, Flynn couldn't help but stutter over the name.

He wasn't touching that one yet; there were too many complicated feelings tied up in that one that Flynn wasn't capable of dealing with right then.

At his words, Judy's lips curled upwards into an altogether rather mysterious smile.

“You didn't get the chance to meet the last member of our party,” she elaborated, “He was the victim of   an unfortunate accident and was injured until just a short while ago.” Flynn blinked at her, slightly bewildered and wondering if she was being confusing on purpose or if he was worse off than he'd thought. “This should be good.” Judy stopped at the nose of the ship, raised her hands, and tucked them behind her ears as if to amplify her voice, though she said nothing. She closed her eyes and Flynn took the opportunity to watch her with an intensity just this side of rude, looking away when she opened them again. “My friend will be here soon.”

“Uh, okay...” Flynn said bemusedly. Judy continued to stand serenely as if patience flowed through her veins instead of blood.

Judy must have heard something he couldn't because suddenly she shifted her gaze to the sky and seconds later a rumbling trill echoed from the sky, and Flynn's jaw dropped when out of the clouds came a blue and violet...something. It was huge and like no animal Flynn had ever seen before.

“That's, uh, that's your friend?” 

“Of course,” Judith replied, “His name is Ba'ul.”

Ba'ul looked like a giant flying whale and Flynn had never seen anything like him in his life except for a while ago, when he'd seen...But it couldn't be, that animal from then was just big enough to carry a rider and Ba'ul was big enough to pull a ship through the air.

“Ba'ul is an Entelexeia.”

Flynn shifted his gaze from Ba'ul to Judith, back to Ba'ul and back to Judith. Then without a word his mouth dropped open.

“You...you were the one from Ragou's mansion!” he sputtered.

Judith sent him a sharp smile with teeth.

“What are you going to do, commander, arrest me?”

Flynn went stock still and the memory of Heliord was almost enough to give him the bluster to say yes, yes he was, but then he stopped. There was no point; even if he bothered then Yuri would slaughter him when he got back and then bust her out of jail anyway, and he seriously doubted that Estelle would stand for it either. And besides, he was finding it hard enough to find people he could trust and, criminal misdeeds or not, Judith was higher on the list right now than most people he could think of.

“...no,” he finally muttered and ignored the girl's knowing smirk in favor of staring up at Ba'ul. “It's nice to meet you, Ba'ul.” A rumble answered him.

“Ba'ul says that it's good to meet you too. Now come on.”

“What do you mean—what are you doing?!”

And without further ado or so much as a warning, Flynn found himself being hauled by the arm up onto Ba'ul's back.

Okay, Judy would admit the idea to drag the leading Commandant onto the back of her best friend was completely on the fly. She really had only intended on letting Flynn meet Ba’ul. Meet someone else who was worried about Yuri and had, probably, the best chance of finding him out there. 

And then she saw the look on Flynn’s face and him doing the math only to figure out that she was the one that destroyed all those blastia.  _ Well at least he wouldn’t arrest me. _ Because Yuri would kill him. He didn’t say as much, but she knew he was thinking it. So why not? Why not bring him out for a few hours and get him away from everything that was drowning the guy while all he really wanted to do was try and find his best friend. 

Which was exactly what Judy had wanted to do since the end of their battle yesterday when she quickly realized things had gone from not good to bad to pretty much the worst case scenario. She found it very hard to keep an open mind and that was the stark reality of her situation. She was good at being the encouraging one. Sure that was easy. Smile, look helpful, and lie through your teeth at every turn and people will praise you for being the never ending source of hope. 

Did she really feel like that?? No. Because throughout her life she had learned plenty of lessons and one of the most prominent ones was that hope was fleeting and it was only a matter of time before you had to let go of it. There will always be war, there will always be bad people, there will always be something to fight for even if fighting is the last thing you want to do. 

So she had wanted to jump off that platform and look because if anyone could prove her wrong? It was Yuri. He had already done so more times than she could count and being around him and the rest of his group had changed her in more ways than she’d like to admit. 

So she owed it to them. She owed it to Yuri to look even though every logical fragment of her mind was telling her it was already far too late. He had fallen a long way, a very long way, and even if that hadn’t...well, a whole night was a long time to be bobbing in waves exhausted and, most likely, injured. She’d never say as much out loud. It wasn’t her place or her right. Not to the group that took her in even after all the trouble she’d caused them. Even after she was spying on them. Even after she admitted she was going to kill one of them. Because after all that, after learning everything, after Yuri breaking into Barbos’ tower with her and letting her punch him in the face and after her betraying them...they’d still called her a friend. 

Brave Vesperia would never let her go and so she won’t let Yuri go until she absolutely has to. 

It helped that Flynn's face right now was priceless. She’d managed to seat him behind her, wide eyed and stuttering, and Ba’ul had taken off before any sort of coherent protest could escape the blonde’s lips (because Ba’ul had caught onto her plans far faster than Flynn had). 

“Commandant,” Judy had to force herself not to laugh as arms abruptly tightened around her waist as Ba’ul headed up towards the top of Zaude and the clouds. “Are you afraid of flying?” 

A wordless noise was her only response.  _ Oh my... _ “Did you just squeak?”

“N...no!” Flynn sputtered. 

_ Yes you did. _ Judy twisted a little and smirked at the man who had his head practically buried in his chest plate and eyes tightly shut. She had expected him to be more like Yuri...Yuri had literally just jumped onto Ba’ul that first time and he had seemed to really enjoy the ride too. This was...interesting. 

“Take a look.” Judy said prying the hands around her stomach apart. “Ba’ul’s a good flyer. He won’t let anything happen to you.” A soft rumble backed up her statement. 

Another (almost inaudible) squeak was followed by a gasp as blue eyes finally peeled themselves open and looked down. And then up, and around and down again. All the wonder in the world and the most important man in the entire kingdom looked like a ten year old for just moment. “This is how you guys got around?”

“Yup!” Judy grinned to herself as she gave her friend a soft pat. “Ba’ul’s part of our group too. Yuri even got to ride him when he was smaller.”

A long groan pitched through the sky and Flynn jumped a little. “What did he say?”

“That he owes Yuri his life and that he wants to find him too.” 

And that was the solid truth, Judy told herself. Ba’ul did. And so did she. Because neither of them wanted to lose someone else. Not like this. Not when there was so much left to fight for. Not when the person who had shown her the world was worth living in deserved so much better. Not when the man sitting behind her needed his best friend. Not when the princess down there on that shrine needed the guy who had shown her the world. Not when Karol and Raven on one of those boats needed a guild leader and partner. 

“Ready, Flynn?” Judy asked simply using his name. Because up here he didn’t have to be a commandant in armor. He could just be a friend looking for a friend. There was something in that that made Judy happy she dragged him up there.

The ship that always seemed so huge from the docks was tiny from here, like the ones made of sticks and twine that he and Yuri would make as kids and try to race down the river, and for a good few minutes Flynn couldn't speak. He'd never been in the air before, not like this, and it stole his breath away. His hands which had instinctively gone white-knuckled around Judy's middle went slack as he stared, seeing the world in a way he thought just slightly impossible.

It was beautiful, even with purple streaking the sky.

And absolutely terrifying.

And Flynn kind of wanted to get down except not really, because he felt like he could stay in the sky forever.

He was thrown out of his head when Judith mentioned him by name and not title, and he forgot about how high up he was for a few seconds in favor of looking her in the face.

“Ready for...?”

“Isn't it obvious?” Judy asked and cocked her head, “Three sets of eyes are better than two, after all. We have a friend to find.” Flynn didn't consider protesting for a single moment, as if he'd left his distrust down there on the boat with his lieutenants—soon-to-be captains now, Flynn supposed. He wanted to find Yuri. He needed to find Yuri with a need that burned his insides like fever that made everything else so much harder to handle. If he could just do this one thing it would be enough, wouldn't it?

He didn't need to run through the statistics, the odds, the numbers. Witcher had done plenty of that the night before, as if numbers and inevitably could ever do anything for Flynn. As if anything but finding Yuri could do anything for Flynn.

If anyone could manage to come through this, it would be Yuri.

Flynn had to be strong, not just for Yuri's friends but for his own people who were watching the world fall apart around them who didn't know what to do, for his knights, for all the people living in towns who had no idea what was going on and no one to let them know. For the Lower Quarter who had raised him.

And maybe for Judy too even though she didn't seem to much need his strength with plenty of her own.

Maybe Flynn didn't know how to save the world but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try.

“You're very kind, you know,” he said suddenly, scanning the waters with sharp eyes. “I hope you know that.”

Violet eyes blinked.

“Oh?” she asked, purposefully delicate, “I thought we just met and I'm a criminal too. What do you know about my kindness?' The edges of Flynn's lips quirked upwards.

“As if you could be anything but, to keep everyone together so well. I know I appreciate it.” He wouldn't risk embarrassing her by elaborating further, not with the way that her sands suddenly tangled up in Ba'ul substantial ruff, but he wanted to say it anyway. “You didn't have to come looking for me and you didn't have to do this either, but I'm pretty glad you did.” Yuri always did attract exceptional people. Not always extraordinary people but exceptional, different, special people.

Good.

And Flynn found himself trusting Yuri's judgment without thinking about it even though he should have balked, did his best to put his faith in the people Yuri could make his family.

“Thank you, Judith.”

For the first time since he's seen her the Krityan girl looks slightly shaken and blown off course before she smooths down her composure and smiles, though something in it looks kind of sheepish and just a touch more honest.

“It's no more than anyone would do for me.”

And then Flynn thought suddenly that he might have embarrassed her because not two seconds later, her smile went wicked.

“I don't see anything around here. Shall we?”

“Shall we what--?” And then all of Flynn's words got caught in his throat to be replaced by a humiliating  eep! as Ba'ul veered off and picked up speed by an unspoken request, and he was pretty sure that he heard Judith sniggering to herself, but it could have just been the wind whistling in his ears.


	3. Chapter 3

Three days. It had been three whole days since the battle on top of Zaude had ended. Three days since the Adephagos appeared in the sky. Three days since Flynn became Commandant. Three days since Alexei and Yeager’s deaths. Three days since Yuri’s disappearance. 

And no one had stopped since. Karol hadn’t set foot on dry land since he took that first boat out to look; Judy only stopped when Ba’ul needed a break and those were very short breaks. Rita was probably sleeping inside the shrine because no one had seen her except for Estelle....

And Estelle. Well, she was everywhere it seemed. With Rita, out riding with Judy, on a boat with Karol, discussing the future of the kingdom with Flynn. And Flynn was even worse than her. It was only a matter of time before he dropped. Before any of them dropped.

And Raven wasn’t quite sure how to tell them that they needed to stop. Mostly because he himself didn’t want to stop and partially because they wouldn’t listen to him no matter how much he pleaded with them. He had no right. No right at all to have that conversation with them. At the same time, though? He had every right, because they took him back in and he was part of their group and apparently, still was worth asking for help from even after everything. Karol asked him to go out on a boat with him more than once and Judy even offered to take him up on Ba’ul. Estelle asked him if he knew any good search and rescue strategies and Repede hadn’t really left his side.

But Repede seemed to be the only one that hadn’t disowned him at some point because back on Heracles he was the first one to approach Raven. To welcome him back by sitting on his feet; which Raven cherished more than he would ever admit to Yuri. Maybe Repede knew Flynn was too busy to follow around right now and Estelle was everywhere a dog couldn’t really be. Or maybe it was something different, either way Raven wasn’t going to push away the company or a companion that had just lost his best friend.

It was for Yuri’s sake that Raven was keeping his mouth shut at the moment, even though it was getting more and more difficult to do so.

Three days was way past the point of no return in a situation like this. Looking for a lost comrade; he’d been in this situation way too many times before and three days was usually when they called it off. Because, by that point they were looking for a body.

And all those times were on land. This was the ocean. The water. Currents and animals and... Even if Yuri was still around...

Raven shook his head. He couldn’t think about things like that. Not right now. It was too soon even though it was too late. It was some kind of cruel gift he was giving everyone by letting them hold onto hope. And he hated himself for it, but it hurt even just thinking about telling them to stop. It hurt physically; like someone was grabbing his lungs and keeping them from expanding. The air would catch in his throat and he’d have to hold in some kind of strangled cry.

If he told them to stop they would probably push him away and then where would he go? It was selfish thinking and Raven knew he was only lying it out that way partially because he just didn’t want to break their hearts. He was expendable, that much he knew and it was probably going to be his job in the end to push them onwards so for right now, he could stall a little. Or maybe start pushing just a little because it always a little easier to ease into this kind of thing instead of running headlong into it like a brick wall.

_ I’m getting too old for this.  _

Raven gathered blue fur between his fingers and gave Repede a pat on the head before standing up from his sunning spot on the bow of the small boat Flynn had lent Karol. There was barely enough crew to keep the ship running and Raven was pretty sure that aside from himself and Karol no one else was actually looking in the water for Yuri.

Most eyes were turned skyward and who could blame them? The Adaphagos was scary. It wasn’t just looking at it that made a knot curl in Raven’s stomach either. By now everyone had received the report about where the Adaphagos had come from. Or rather...the fact that it was always there and they just couldn’t see it. 

The life of an outlaw was hardly worth a soldiers time right now and the Captain inside Raven knew that and kind of agreed with it. But Captain Schwann was dead and Raven, member of Brave Vesperia, was fighting for that insignificant life because to him? It was anything but insignificant. 

Then again, Brave Vesperia had a responsibility to the world to take down that Adaphagos. 

It didn’t take long for Raven to find Karol. He was in the same spot he had been since the sun came up hours ago. Up the mast on the look out post eyes peeled for changes in the water. After leaving Repede at the bottom of the ladder Raven didn’t climb quietly and Karol didn’t turn when he came up next to him. Raven knew that somewhere in there Karol was still betrayed and angry at him for his part in everything. He knew that the kid couldn’t trust him, but at the moment he also had little choice.

_ Really don’t wanna start this. _

With a sigh Raven leaned up against the railing and soaked in the breeze for a minute before talking. “Karol.”

No response. 

“It’s been three days.” 

“What’s your point?” This time Karol turned and narrowed his eyes at Raven. He already knew where this conversation was going. 

“You know my point, kid.” Raven's hands curled into fists as he looked directly at the little guild leader. “We’ve gotta-”

“Keep looking.” Karol finally met his gaze with a stare so hard it could light a fire. “Don’t you dare say it Raven. Don’t you even dare  _ think  _ it.”  _ Don't you dare. _

“Karol...”

“No,” Karol snapped, suddenly furious, tipping off an invisible edge created from too little restful sleep and what could be the end of the world and missing the hell out of the first real friend he could ever count on, “No. We're not giving up on Yuri!” It had been three days and he didn't need to have been a member of a sailing guild to know the chances and percentages. He didn't need them. He didn't need them! He didn't need figures or anyone's pity or Raven looking like he cared that much even as he told him that it was better to just give up.

It was suddenly too difficult to look Raven straight in the face when he looked that honest and Karol fended off the heat building behind his eyes by squeezing them shut and clenching his jaw so abruptly that his teeth clacked together. It might have hurt if he'd been focused at all on it.

“You can give up if you want,” Karol said, “But I'm not.” His throat felt tight and his eyes burned miserably. It was everything he had to not cry right there.

Raven opened his mouth as if to say something and Karol continued before he could get a word out.

“Yuri would never give up on any of us,” he said and the words felt bitter and poisonous, resentful, on his tongue, and Karol almost didn't recognize them as his, “Brave Vesperia doesn't leave anyone behind.”

Raven bit his tongue. Literally. Bit it until he could taste blood and just shook his head. He knew it wasn’t going to matter. Not anything he could say would change anything. Karol, and everyone else, was still too fragile and hopeful and scared. And while Raven had every right to give his two cents he knew that he wouldn’t be taken seriously.

Someone’s gotta play the bad guy. And he’d done that already and no one had actually forgiven him for it yet; even if they claimed things were more kosher. But he could see it. It showed in the way they sat away from him at meals or never looked him in the eyes or how they’d never ask him questions directly or look to him like they used to.

So what could he do here? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.  _ And so I won’t _ . 

“I’m taking Yaeger’s body back to Dahngrest, then.” Raven said, turning towards the ladder to retreat back to the deck. 

Karol sputtered. “You....you’re really going to just give up on Yuri! After everything he’s done for you?? After everything you did and after he- we all- let you stick around? You’re just going to abandon him?”

“No.” Raven deadpanned. “I’m leaving because you, all of you, clearly don’t want or need me around. No matter what I say or do it’s not gonna make a difference right now and I’m not gonna stick around where I can’t do anything.”

_ Besides no one else is gonna give that idiot a proper burial. _ Because no one else cared or understood and what it really boiled down to at that moment was that Raven needed to do something for someone and the cold hard truth was that right then? The best he could do was a good deed for a dead man. 

Raven turned and stepped down the first runs on the ladder and finally looked up at Karol, who was staring at him open-jawed and wide-eyed. Utter betrayal. Again. “Hate me all ya want kid, but I gotta do what's right by me too. And watching you lot run yourselves into the ground doesn’t sit well.” 

Karol couldn't do anything but stare down from his post at the top of the crow's nest. He felt cold all over, the anger that was sweeping through him had been replaced by a chill that sunk down to his bones and made him feel more numb than anything. Raven was leaving. He was leaving.

“Okay,” he finally answered, “Fine. Go, then. Go on and leave, see if I care!” His voice gave one treacherous tremble, and he squashed it down.

Karol did care. He didn't want to but he did care and now Raven was leaving too like it didn't matter. Like none of it mattered at all. Karol didn't want it to matter.

It would have been so much easier if he could hate Raven. He hated him now but Karol knew full well that that would be fleeting. The anger would linger but the hatred would melt away like the first snow of the season until all he'd be left with was an ache like a too-deep bruise. Anyone else would have been content taking Raven on like a dog, to carry out orders and keep his head down and bark when he was told but Karol just couldn't. And he'd known that when the hatred faded that Yuri couldn't either.

That was what made this so hard.

It had been Karol who'd messed up and let himself get too close in the first place. It had been so obvious that Raven was shady (he'd made no effort to hide it) and Karol had fallen for it anyway. He'd let himself trust, he'd let himself get close, and he'd let himself think, when no one was around and when it was quiet enough that he thought he could get away with it, that this was what it might have felt like to have a father. He'd found a family in his friends but he'd thought that he could have found a father in Raven. He'd cared for him like a little kid and now he hurt like a little kid, and he almost couldn't separate the anger he felt over Yuri from the anger he felt over the betrayal itself.

But Karol Capel was a guild leader. The world was in a crisis and everything was falling apart but that didn't give him an excuse to abandon his responsibilities. Or his friends.

And Raven, despite how angry Karol was at him now, was both a guild member and a friend, even if sometimes it didn't feel like it.

He drew in a breath and swallowed down the hurtful words that wanted to come flying out of him, swallowed hard until all he felt was a lump in his throat. Manageable.

“You...” he croaked and then coughed, started again, “When are you coming back?” That last bit was said so quietly that it was nearly a whisper but Karol trusted that Raven would hear him regardless. It wasn't like he really felt that Raven wouldn't return but he hadn't said he would either, and he'd rather now stew in not knowing when all he'd had to do was ask.

“As soon as I can.” Raven answered simply and with nothing but honesty. Because he would and it didn’t really dawn on him that Karol would even have to ask, but on second thought it made total sense. “I belong to Brave Vesperia now, right? Not just Yuri Lowell. So I’ll come back until you tell me to go away.”

And with that Raven continued down the ladder. He could only hope that Karol would believe him- if anything Raven had proven he was good at obeying orders; whether it came from a commandant or guild leader. Because in the end that was all he was really good at now. Taking other people’s words and making actions out of them.

Was he just leaving because no one was telling him what to do right now? It wouldn’t surprise Raven, not one bit. He really didn’t want to leave, but he knew he had to. He might be older and he might be the underdog right now, but he still had his own rights and even if he had to convince himself that they existed somewhere in that messed up world he’d try and own them.

At least for a little. 

* * *

 

It wasn’t until the third day that Sodia felt her first inkling of anger over her actions on top of the shrine.

But not regret. Just anger. Because why Flynn was so determined to find Yuri, even after all this time, was beyond her. He was dead, there were no two ways about it. He’d been missing for days and no one knew that he was also bleeding as he took his fall.

Yuri Lowell was dead and Flynn needed to stop telling himself otherwise. 

It wasn’t fair to her or the other knights or to the kingdom which so direly needed his attention. Needed his attention far more than a dead man did. Far more than someone who never deserved the attention in the first place.

So Sodia had set out to try and remind Flynn of his duty like a friend should. She couldn’t totally blame him; Yuri was a good friend, best friend, but...the knight and the  _ world _ needed a commandant and Flynn just needed a small reminder. That’s all it usually took. He’d understand and things would continue on as they should.

Sodia had not expected Flynn to....well...

Completely freak out. 

And it all happened so fast. She’d started out the conversation easily enough from the entrance to his office on he main armada ship. “Sir, do you have minute?”

Flynn nodded, barely peeling his eyes away from the map he was looking at to glance at her for a brief second. “Of course, come in.”

Flynn looked tired...not just tired, but sick. Dark circles encompassed his dull eyes that were usually a vibrant blue and blonde hair that usually had a small bounce to it was laying flat and unkempt (if not a little wind blown). 

“I was hoping to talk to you about pulling out of here soon.” Flynn’s head snapped up immediately and Sodia stumbled with her words at the sudden venom what was welling up in his gaze, but pressed on anyway. “We...we’ve okayed the shrine so we can leave the research of the Adephagos to the mages. There’s a lot of cleanup that needs to be done in Zaphias and Heracles is still off the coast. Not to mention the princess needs-”

Sodia stopped dead as Flynn shifted his stance from slightly hunched to straight up and arms across his chest.

It was as though she’d forgotten the exact reason why she had done what she did for a moment and then was reminded ten fold as Flynn’s pale skin turned crimson. Because for Yuri Lowell, Flynn would throw all logic and reason and anything sane and normal out the window and bend every rule. 

Waste everyone’s time. No regrets yet. 

“Get to your point, Sodia.”

“Sir.” Sodia almost backed up a step. This was an anger she’d never seen before. It was cold, not loud, but she planted her foot down. If she just showed him the reality of the situation. He’d understand; he’d have too. Yuri wasn’t worth their time, money, or efforts. Not right now. It was plain and simple and something anyone should be able to see. 

“It’s been three days and we have one too many crises on our hands to be...using up man power on a search and rescue for one person.”

Flynn felt frost travel up his fingertips and his heart pound drumbeats in his head. Already on edge to start with, his temper was in tatters and he was at the end of his rope in about every way he could think of. And the worst part was that the logical part of him knew that his lieutenant was right. She had every right to be focusing on the fate of the world and she was right that they didn't have the time or the manpower to spare.

But that didn't matter because Flynn hadn't slept more than a few hours at a stretch for three days and this whole time he'd stayed calm, he'd stayed quiet, and he'd stayed sane.

And in just a single sentence, all his composure and sanity fled him with an almost audible snap.

His fist lashed out and smashed into the wall, sending chips of wood clattering to the ground.

“Care to repeat that, lieutenant?” he asked, dangerously quiet.

Sodia quailed under his stare but straightened as if steel had been poured into her spine.

“We need to stop looking for Lowell,” she repeated, finally, “It's a waste we can't afford. Sir.”

“It's not your business to tell me what we can afford!” he snarled, “Am I Commandant or not?”

“You are, sir, but--”

“Then it's your job to act like it and do as I say.” Flynn stilled entirely then. “You've never understood!” The cold tone had been replaced by something raw and painful and the words, though easy, felt as if they were dragging claws through the back of his throat. “I've never expected you to understand how I feel about Yuri and I know you don't like him, and I don't care if you like him or not. It's not your job to like him. If we can't find and save one single person, how the hell are we expected to save the world? How am I expected to...” Flynn bit down and cut himself off. “If you have a problem with that, keep it to yourself or find someone more suitable to serve.” At some point during his tirade Flynn's voice had risen to a shout and Sodia had lost all color in her face until she stood there, silent and pale as milk. The whites of her eyes were showing and she eyed his fist still hovering in its dent in the wall with trepidation. “Am I clear?”

For a solid minute all Sodia could really do was stare. Stare and open and close her mouth like a fish out of water because this...this was new. She’d seen Flynn annoyed and even a bit angry. She’d seen his blood pressure raise and heard his voice get louder but never anything like this.

This was a new kind of anger. A kind that had been rooted and boiling like magma in a volcano and she’d just witnessed the eruption. It was an anger that stemmed from a million different problems bubbling int he same pool and a thousand unattended frustrations ranging from Sodia’s personal grudge against Yuri to all the world resting on Flynn’s shoulders. 

If Sodia had only known how much her dislike of Yuri bothered Flynn... No, it wouldn’t have changed anything.  _ Yuri was bad for him and I can’t hide that. _ Not for Flynn, not for her captain and commander who deserved so much better. 

If she had known that taking Yuri out of the picture would have hung Flynn up this much? Well, if she was honest with herself Sodia was pretty sure she’d still do the same thing. Just maybe not when the end of the world was hanging in the balance and the knights were the ones that held the rice to tip the scales. Because seeing Flynn like this? Hurt.

He was more than just a captain, he was her friend. She went on his pilgrimage with him! And even if that was interrupted by guild problems and Entelexia and the end of the world, she’d been by his side this whole time supporting him and he’d supported her. 

So right now she had to do what he needed, not what was necessary because no one probably even knew what actually needed to be done. Not her, or the mages, or the guilds and not Flynn so he was trying to grasp onto the things that he could comprehend. The only tangible thread of change and hope that he could. 

Saving Yuri.

So Sodia didn’t agree with it? Didn’t matter, she had to help him now so he could see the truth later. So things would get better eventually. 

Softening her stance Sodia took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Sir.” Flynn’s hand fell flat against his side and he dropped it from the wall. “Please, go rest.”

And now Sodia sounded like she was pleading, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t see Flynn like this. She couldn’t watch him wear himself down...kill himself...for Yuri. So she’ll take care of him until he realizes he shouldn’t do this to himself over trivial people and trivial matters.

“I can’t, Sodia.” Flynn hung his head and for a moment it looked like he was about to keel over.

“You can and you need to Sir.” Sodia put a foot down to direct his attention. “You’ve been up for days and I think, at this point, we could all do with a small break. What’s a few hours going to do at this point? Please, we need our Commandant. We need you to stay well enough to help us figure things out. Not solve all the problems by yourself.”

Flynn sagged the tiniest bit as the fight drained out of him like water from a sink. He was just so tired to the point that he wasn't tired anymore, to the more that he wasn't entirely sure he knew how to stop. He knew that if he stopped the world wouldn't wait for him, and he'd seen what happened when the world was let to go, especially these days...And people needed him. He felt pulled in a thousand different directions, every person seeming to need something only he could give and Flynn knew what he was responsible for all too well.

And he knew that Sodia was right.

He was needed but his people needed him to be at the very best he could be, even if that meant not being available for a period of time. He couldn't be the person he needed to be like this. He couldn't.

Yuri would have told him that he was being an idiot and he would have been right. He'd have told Flynn to calm down and get some rest and Flynn probably wouldn't have listened, but he'd have been right.

Just like Sodia was right about him now.

After a few moments of deliberation, Flynn let out a deep breath and stepped away from the wall. He felt so heavy. Sodia eyed him with blatant concern and he felt a rush of gratitude for having someone so dependable at his side.

“Sir?”

“You're right, lieutenant, I—I can't say that I've gotten much sleep these last few days,” he said finally, “Thank you. And I apologize for my outburst.” With only the slightest rustling of papers, he handed the stuffed folder of reports from the mages over to her. “I'm going to go see if I can't grab a short nap. Take care of things in the interim in my stead? If anything happens...”

“I'll wake you immediately,” Sodia said promptly, relaxed now that it was clear that the monster that was his temper had gone quiet, “Have a good rest, sir.”

Flynn never thought that it would feel strange for his hands to be finally empty, he thought as he made his way to his quarters, that it would feel strange to have nothing to do but sleep even as the world fell apart.

Maybe when he awoke, there'd be more of an answer for him.

* * *

 

Estelle’s hope was dying. 

It had been almost a week now and Estelle was losing hope. It had been so easy at first. Well, not easy persay, because the world was breaking into pieces and Yuri was missing and all she had to do was think about how Zaphias looked or look up at the sky and see the Adephagos stretching out to feel like there was very little to be hopeful about, but still, it had been so much easier to be hopeful. In the first few days, it was hard but not unbearable, because she wasn’t being hopeful alone.

And then something changed.

It wasn’t enough to be hopeful because all the hope in the world couldn’t replace some sort of result, some sort of hint, some sort of sign that they weren’t fighting a downhill battle. And Estelle was naive and sometimes a little selfish and sometimes a little thoughtless, but even she couldn’t ignore what she’d known from the very moment she’d laid her hands on another human being to heal them--the fragility of the body. She knew Yuri’s especially because he’d never known the meaning of the word careful, and thinking about it brought an unconscious smile to her lips before it dropped off like paint.

Estelle knew all about the fragility of the body and she she knew about the fragility of spirit too. That wasn’t a lesson she learnt from Yuri, not at all, that one she learned the moment Alexei used her own powers against her and she gave in for the first time to utter despair.

She was determined to avoid it now at all costs. No one could afford it and she couldn’t afford uselessness, not when everyone else around her had so much to offer.

Her heart hurt. For Yuri and the hole his absence left on it, Flynn, Judy and Karol and Rita and Repede and Ba’ul too, her friends, not to mention her people who had to deal with a crumbling city and a problem none of them knew how to fight, for the guilds, for the world. And for herself too. A week of burning strong had left her feeling burned out and lackluster like a candle in the deepest kind of caves where there was so little air that nothing burned and almost nothing lived.

Estelle could see the hope everyone held for Yuri slowly slipping their fingers and she didn’t want to accept it, but Estelle couldn’t pretend to be the naive little girl she’d started out as. No one could keep going like this. Sleep had been near impossible since the battle atop Zaude and meals were a necessity and not a novelty and if she was feeling like that, she didn’t know how it was for anyone else.

She knew she might have to accept that, but she didn’t want that day to be today.

For once since this all started, Estelle wasn’t on the shrine or on a boat or searching on Ba’ul. It was a quiet morning and Estelle found herself wandering the ship, walking the halls and paths until she reached the deck, stepping out into the sunshine. The weather was beautiful despite the Adephagos in the sky, breezy and just this side of warm, and when Estelle got to the upper deck, she immediately caught sight of Flynn sitting on a crate in the sunshine, Repede dutifully at his side.

Estelle made her way over. 

“H-hey!” her voiced squeaked, “Flynn!”

Flynn looked up.

“Oh, good morning, your highness.”

Estelle fidgeted and shifted on the balls of her feet.

“Are you alright?”

She jerked.

“Oh, I...” she began with hesitation. Outside of conversations involving the fate of the world, she hadn’t spent much time with Flynn. It just hurt when all she could see every time she looked at him was Yuri. “May I sit with you?” Blue eyes blinked.

“Of course.” Estelle sat, eyeing her friend despite herself. She opened her mouth, seconds away from asking if he was alright, then changed her mind at the last moment. Anyone with eyes could see that he wasn’t, though he looked better after he’d gotten some sleep.

“Are you taking a break?”

“Yeah, a short one,” Flynn admitted reluctantly, “It seems to improve morale if I don’t look like I’m about to drop.”

“R-right! Yes, I’m sure it does.”

Flynn scrutinized her right back in return during the slightly awkward silence. She looked like he was sure he’d looked to Sodia, he thought. Gone was the natural bounce in her step and there were inky smudges under her eyes from lack of sleep, and her hair hung unbrushed around around her shoulders. Green eyes, formerly bright and cheery, showed only exhaustion.

God, he thought, she was as bad as he was, and the more he thought about about it the worse it sounded. Was this what Sodia had seen in him when she’d ordered him to rest?

“How much have you slept, Lady Estellise?” he asked.

“Enough,” the girl replied not a little bit evasively, implying that at the very least that was an incredible stretch of the truth, “That’s not really what’s important right now.” Flynn begged to differ but let it go in light of the slightly desperate plea in her face that he please drop it.

The silence was on the verge of painful when suddenly, Flynn caught sight of a familiar dark shape cutting through the water towards them. A very familiar dark shape with a very familiar atop it, and Flynn immediately recognized the boat he’d offered Raven when he announced his trip back to Dahngrest a few days back.

Estelle noticed it about the same time he did.

“Is that Raven?” she asked and scrambled to her feet before waiting for an answer, darting over to the side of the boat to see more clearly like she couldn’t help herself. Flynn followed her a few paces behind, hands twisted behind his back in anticipation.

Flynn nodded. “Looks, like it. That was a pretty quick trip, I wasn’t expecting him to return so soon. Though, I hope he cleaned that bottom room...”

And Estelle let out one of those small half laugh half snorts and immediately put her hands to her mouth as Flynn flinched. 

“I can’t believe I just laughed at that.” She said as she looked up at Flynn wide eyed.

Flynn stared back at her equally wide eyed, but not because she laughed.“I can’t believe I just  _ said _ that.” And Flynn found himself laughing as Estelle dissolved into giggles again. It was the kind of laughter that you knew was wrong. So  _ so  _ wrong, but it had become a dark time and that dark humor sometimes seemed to be the only thing that could make someone let go a little.

Flynn shook his head as he took a few deep breaths to calm himself and if he wasn’t so tired he would pay more attention to the part of him that was telling him he was losing what little sanity he had left. “That sounded like something Yuri would say.”

Estelle nodded, suddenly somber again. “That’s  _ exactly _ what he would say.” 

Flynn grit his teeth. How could he possibly make a joke at a time like this? Maybe he’d fallen apart more than he thought, but it was almost all he could do at this point to not keep himself from running back to his office and locking the door behind him. Because if dancing around the bush with Estelle was awkward?

Well Captain Schwann just sailed back into port. Enough said. 

* * *

 

Raven saw the glint of Flynn’s armor before he spotted pink standing next to him. Good, at least he had an immediate destination to go to. It was also nice to see they hadn’t killed themself in their searches. 

So he ignored the two staring at him as he tied up the smaller boat and thanked the two sailers that were unfortunate enough to get handed the duty of sailing with him. His trip had been brief, but it was all the time he needed to do some thinking.

Okay, a lot of thinking. 

About lots of different things; guilds, and knights, and empires, and monsters, and ancient civilizations and where he belonged in all of it. Unfortunately, he hadn’t really come to any kind of definitive answer or any conclusion at all. He found himself just thinking in circles until he couldn’t stand it anymore. 

He did, however, come to one conclusion while saying his good-bye to Yeager and in order for this plan to pan out he needed on princess and one newly promoted commandant. With that in mind he made his way from one tiny ship to the largest one in the armada sitting around Zaude to find Flynn and Estelle in pretty much the same spot by the rails not talking or even looking at one another. 

_ Oh yeah, that bodes well _ . Repede however turned and walked across the deck to meet him. It was nice that at least one being in and around Zaude didn’t hate him entirely. Raven had to take a small breath before approaching the duo because what he was about to propose was either going to work out or end up with him at the bottom of the ocean. Either way it wasn’t going to be fun.

Estelle turned first and Raven almost stopped dead mid-step. She looked awful and that was putting it nicely. She hadn’t taken it easy at all and that just meant that Flynn-  _ Oh man, it’s worse than I thought.  _

Dull blue eyes caught Raven’s attention for a brief second before quickly looking aside. Flynn looked like he was about to fall over. His shoulders were hunched and even under his armor Raven could see his breathing. He was tired and emotionally drained and...killing himself really. 

Nevertheless Raven stopped in front of them a few paces back than he normally would have and had to resist the urge to bow to his princess and salute to his commander. Instead he kept a firm grasp on his dagger and quickly batted his bangs from his eyes. “Do you two have a moment?”

No slang and no formality because that wasn’t what either of them needed. 

“Of course.” Estelle was obviously trying to sound as sincere as possible, but it wasn’t very believable. “Did your trip go okay?”

“Nothing special.” 

Flynn’s eyes darted between them before settling on Raven, kind of. “Should we go to my office?”

Raven nodded and waited until they were well past him to follow, Repede waiting for him. He was going to keep his distance because he knew that Karol wasn’t the only one mad at him for leaving. He was just the only one that voiced his opinion on the matter. 

Granted both Flynn and Estelle had much larger reasons for hating him right now and Raven was going to own that. Even if it was going to make the next few minutes excruciating. 

Flynn shut the door behind Raven and quickly crossed the room to lean up against his desk, arms crossing. Estelle took a chair and set it down lightly next to Flynn (and if that wasn’t a clue for just how tired she was than Raven would eat his hair tie), she waited patently for someone to start. 

“I was thinking,” Raven started quickly. Just get it done with. 

“About our former commandant.” And Flynn’s spine straightened faster than Raven could shoot off an arrow. Estelle lost what remaining color she had in her cheeks. “You can call me crazy or nostalgic or whatever you want, but just hear me out. Alexei did a lot of bad things, I’m not gunna deny that. He didn’t deserve any respect in the end, but he wasn’t always a bad guy. He was one of the greatest commandants this empire has ever seen and he did a lot of good. A lot of good and I think he deserves to be remembered for those small details.”

Flynn’s eyes narrowed. “Remembered? What do you mean?”

“A memorial?” Estelle asked all too softly. “Here? Now? How could we?”

“There couldn’t be a better time.” Raven waved to the small port hole in the wall. “Out there is a small armada of knights with low morale who are confused and lost and in need of something to hold onto. Most of them don’t know what happened up there in Zaude and they don’t need to know. What they need to know is that their former leader worked hard and did good and that is something they should all strive to do and be like while the world is falling apart around us.” He looked at Flynn now, solidly. “They need to see that their new leader is going to be an even better man. Not someone who is just going to replace Alexei. Someone who is going to surpass him through hard work and dedication.”

And that was where Raven had to stop for a moment and breathe because despite all his garbage he had with Alexei the man was still his leader and teacher and friend from all those years ago. He was a person who did good and loved and cried and laughed like everyone else. 

Because if Alexei was a monster that didn’t deserve at least that much respect? What did he deserve?

Raven shook his head as Estelle and Flynn exchanged glances with each other. “I thought I’d throw the idea up to you two. I don’t think I’d be able to sleep tonight if I didn’t at least give Alexei the chance to leave some good behind.” 

Estelle couldn’t help but look over at Flynn the instant Raven mentioned Alexei, at least to cover up the spike of sheer, undiluted revulsion that shuddered through her. It was too soon after the fact to try and suppress the instinctual, hair-trigger reactions and watching for Flynn’s instead helped keep her own at bay, at least in some regard.

Nevertheless, Flynn remained silent and mulled things over for so long that Estelle had to think about it herself, despite her first reaction being an emphatic no, no, no!

She’d known Commandant Alexei from the moment she’d walked into the castle. He hadn’t ever been a warm man but he had been kind and more tolerant than he should have had to be in regards to a perpetually curious and perpetually underfoot princess. It was because she was a princess that she was tolerated, Estelle was sure, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d been kind and not curt to her as a child and he hadn’t had to be. He’d never seemed to mind when she would dart away from her tutors and follow him around, and he’d never sent her back or told her that she was in the way, even though he could have and she was sure that she was in the way.

No, he’d never been warm, Estelle knew from experience, but he’d been kinder than he’d had to be.

And of course, she’d heard the stories of him. She knew all the tales of how brave he was, how good of a leader he was, how respected and admired and loved by his knights he was, how talented and skilled. And they hadn’t been tales, Alexei had been all of those things. Still was up until the point he’d lost his mind, and Estelle was grateful that she couldn’t pinpoint the moment it had happened. That wasn’t something she wanted to know. Maybe all of her good memories had been a ploy, maybe she’d made them all up in her head out of loneliness and the need for someone. But they were good memories regardless and they contrasted starkly with her more recent ones, the ones that gave good reason for him to show up in her nightmares.

But the thing was, those issues were hers and for her to deal with. Raven was right in that regard; everyone on the ship was suffering in one way or another, and there was no reason to crush their spirits further by dragging someone beloved through the mud. Sometimes a lie was kinder, and it sat better with Estelle to know that it wouldn’t be a lie, that the things they’d say would be the truth, if omitting the uglier parts of it.

Estelle clenched her hands and drew in a harsh breath.

“Up until recently I held the deepest respect for Commandant Alexei,” she said just a touch too steadily, “The change in those circumstances is no reason to not...” she trailed off, suddenly at a loss as to how to make her point,without sounding like an idiot, “Raven’s right. He did bad. He did a lot of bad. But he did so much good and inspired so many people and--and when people are hurting, they need something good. If there was any time to celebrate the good in people, it’s now.” Estelle refused to think about this in regards to herself, because if it was up to her and what she wanted she’d never even breathe that name again. “I still respect him, just who he was, not who he became.” She quieted and shifted slightly until two sets of eyes. “Flynn? What...what do you think?” This wasn’t just her decision to make.

Flynn who had been completely quiet through the whole of it stood at attention, uncomfortable and torn and strangely soothed in a way that he almost didn’t want to be.

Alexei was a hero. Every knight wanted the chance to serve under him and every officer aspired to be him, to be able to inspire people the way he did, to do the kinds of great deeds that he’d done. In a way Flynn thought himself blessed, because his feelings were surprisingly uncomplicated.

The betrayal was painful but it was simple and easy to untangle. It was easy to separate the man he’d heard mentioned in legends from the man he’d fought for and from there the man he’d had to fight against. It hurt but it was easy to see where each section ended and began.

It wouldn’t have been such an easy decision for him to make if the subject of discussion had been Captain Schwann instead.

He was lucky enough that this could be fairly uncomplicated. He knew he couldn’t say the same for Raven or Lady Estellise, who were more than entitled to have complicated feelings.

If Estelle could put aside her own feelings and remember Alexei as a man and not a monster for at least a little bit, he could as well.

“If you’re okay with it, so am I.”

He didn’t need the need to explain himself. There was nothing he needed to explain. Not this time.

That...was way too easy. Although compared to the conversations Raven was going to have to have in the near future, that was the easy talk. He still mostly expected them both to call him crazy and kick him off the ship, but agreeing with him was okay too. It had been a long time since Raven was so unsure about a conversation before. He spent so much time on the quick trip to Dahngrest debating on whether or not to bring up Alexei that he had started to think himself crazy. 

Alexei was not a good person in the end and Raven knew that, but for some reason he just couldn’t let it go. It wasn’t that much of a mystery in the end. Alexei (and Yeager) were both major parts of Raven from the past...very far into the past. Before the Great War, before his blastia heart, before...he became the criminal. The Don had become a part of that too over the year and now he’d lost them all. He was already so scared of this future that he was going to have to live in. He hadn’t planned on living in the here and now.

So he had been holding onto the things that rooted him to the past just to make it to the end and now...well, he passed the finish line only to find a lot more road in front of him. So he’d have to find something new because his past was all dead and gone and he would bury it proper.

Raven nodded, again resisting the urge to bow. “I’m glad ta here it.”

“On one condition.” Flynn said suddenly with nothing but authority in his voice. A commander ready to give an order and Raven couldn’t help the flinch that twitched his cheeks. “If we are going to do this for the knights, for the world, then we all need to put on our best and really remember why were doing everything because if we can’t be sincere, there is no point.” Blue eyes locked onto Raven and narrowed. “Am I right, Captain?” 

Raven felt the color drain from his face as his hands went cold and immediately started shaking.  _ Oh...oh kid. I don’t think you understand how much I can’t do that.  _

But he was going to have to and Raven knew it because Flynn was right. He couldn’t bring something like this to light and then not live up to his own words completely. 

Slowly Raven straightened his back and put his hands by his sides as he spoke barely above a whisper. “Yes, sir.” 

Estelle glanced from Flynn to Raven, then back to Flynn again.

She knew that Raven had buried Schwann, had basically killed him in the midst of his turnabout. She knew that he'd decided to never be Schwann again and she was okay with that because even though it was hard to look at Raven, it was even worse to look at Schwann. She'd trusted Yuri's judgment on the subject and not her own, because even then she'd known that she was compromised.

Who hadn't been compromised?

She didn't know the intensity of his feelings or even what his feelings were but she didn't miss the twitch that went through his frame or the sudden quiet of his voice and the flash of the whites of his eyes at Flynn's demand. Was he afraid? Estelle didn't know because to her knowledge, she'd never seen him scared. Not like that.

She knew she didn't like it and she didn't like the way Flynn brought it up, like it was an attack. She didn't like the way Raven had cringed as if the words were worse than a blow and instinctively, despite everything, Estelle moved to correct it. Shifting a little, Estelle reached out and wrapped her fingers around Flynn's upper arm. He'd shed most of his armor in the heat and so that he could actually do his paperwork without clanking into the desk and she could feel the tension in his muscles under his tunic and the way he quivered just a tiny bit under hand like a tethered animal.

Flynn was compromised as well just like everyone else.

“Flynn...”

Flynn whipped around and looked to her, blue eyes suddenly blazing and bright.

“Lady Estellise, you aren't suggesting that he show up looking like that!” he made a sweeping gesture towards Raven, “It'd be the pinnacle of disrespect! And with the losses we've had...” he went abruptly quiet when Estelle, who hadn't removed her hand, squeezed firmly.

“I know the protocol,” she said steadily, “We need three command officers of high rank with the authority to speak of the Commandant. You're the obvious choice, I'm the other. There...isn't anyone else who can do it. I know that as well as you do. But I prefer to ask first.” She did look to Raven now, lifting her chin and meeting his eyes. “Raven, would you please bring Captain Schwann to the memorial? It would honor me.”

Raven swallowed hard and took a sharp breath at the same time and nearly choked. The last thing he ever wanted to do was put on that armor again in front of the princess. Flynn was one things, even the guild was another, but the princess? No, he never wanted her to see him in orange or with a sword in his hands for the rest of time. 

“M’ilady.” Raven bowed deep. “There is nothing I could ever do to honor you enough, but I will attend because it is my duty. My duty to you and to Commandant Scifo and my duty to the knights out there that I betrayed. I owe them this much, at least.” 

This time it was Flynn who flinched and Raven wanted nothing more than to run as fast as he could off that ship. Everyone had baggage with Schwann, Flynn had different baggage and that was a whole other kettle of fish that he was going to have to deal with really soon. 

But to his surprise Flynn’s voice dropped from angry to almost hurting. “Not everyone knows what you did. Just like the Comman- former Commandant’s actions. It will do the men good. If you could tell everyone that we will hold the memorial tomorrow morning at sunrise?”

“Of course.” Raven inclined his head and began to back away to the door. “I’ve taken up a lot of your time so I’ll leave you two to it.”

He didn’t wait for a dismissal or an okay, Raven turned heel and walked, half ran, off that boat with no real destination in mind, but he found his feet instinctively carrying him to the shrine entrance. Zaude might be a symbol of fear right now, but inside? It was beautiful and almost peaceful which was pretty messed up. He had almost made it to the doors when a familiar sing songy voice stopped him in his haste.

“You’re back? How was the trip?” Judy sat on the steps leading up to the shrine and smiled at him like she always did. “Is everything okay?”

Raven closed his eyes a minute and turned towards her as she stood and then spotted Karol next to her. He nodded at both of them trying to even out his breathing. “Yeah, just a little restless from being a boat for so long, ya know? Got spoiled flying around on Ba’ul for these past months.” 

Judy laughed. “That’s very true. You forget how big this world is when you can fly around it.” She put a hand on Karol’s shoulder and cocked her head a little. “We were just going to go up with Ba’ul for a little. Would you like to join us?”

Raven shook his head and Karol flinched and cut him off before he could answer. “You really have given up on Yuri haven’t you?”

“No.” Raven said finitely. “Her highness has asked me to help with something and there is a lot to do.”

“Like what?” Karol sounded surprised as if if he couldn’t believe Estelle was doing something other than looking. 

“We are going to hold a memorial tomorrow.” Raven paused and then finished quickly as Karol’s face went white. “For the former Commandant.” 

“W...what? Why?” Karol asked incredulous. 

Judy, on the other hand smiled slightly. “I think that sounds like a great idea. It will do everyone here a lot of good. Let me know if I can help.”

_ Oh Judy. _ Always reliable Judy. Raven wanted to hug her. “Thanks, but you guys have a far more important job right? I’m not going to waste what precious little time you guys have to find Yuri.”

Karol wasn't satisfied with that, that much was more than clear, but he kept quiet in the face of Judy's support. The look on his face was mutinous though and he focused on everything but Raven, still obviously sore and uncomfortable from their last conversation. For a split second he opened his mouth as if to say something and then closed it. His fists clenched briefly at his side but in the end he said nothing.

Raven was grateful for the reprieve, short though it would be.

* * *

 

The memorial was a beautiful one, all things considered.

It took place at sunrise the next morning as promised at the entrance to Zaude. It really was gorgeous, especially with the way the sun creeping up over the horizon cast shadows and glitter on the pristine white arches. It was the perfect place to have it.

Everyone went, it seemed, except for Karol.

He had no affiliation with the knights, he'd said when asked. He was the leader of the guild Brave Vesperia and he had no intention of doing anything to honor the man who'd tried to kill them. He wouldn't judge anyone who decided to go, he'd told Estelle, nor the fact that they'd decided to do it in the first place, but Yuri couldn't be there to refuse to go, so he'd do it for him. She'd merely laced her hands behind her back and accepted his answer and said that she understood, leaving him to it.

The morning dawned and a crowd of knights gathered at the entrance to the shrine in perfectly straight lines. Judith came for an unknown reason, possibly support, for who no one could tell. She stood off to the side and lounged against a pillar the entire time though her eyes remained sharp and focused.

Flynn, Estelle, and Raven stood silently in the threshold, side-by-side, not looking at each other but especially not looking at Raven and his shiny armor, his perfectly pressed uniform of burnished orange and red and white, his hair that hung down over one eye like a smooth, dark curtain. Raven held a sword purely for decoration, both hands settled atop the hilt. Flynn wore his ceremonial uniform and held a broadsword that he'd never touched, one with bright jewels in the hilt and elegant engravings etched into the blade. And then there was Estelle who wore a dress fitted so that she couldn't wear breeches underneath. Her hair was done up and she wore a delicate silver tiara but her face was suspiciously void of all expression.

When everyone was gathered, Estelle took a single step forward and folded her hands behind her back to hide her white knuckles and spoke of a man she grew up watching with stars in her eyes. She told stories from the eyes of a lonely, sheltered little girl of the man who'd first placed her hands on a sword, the one she dug up from memories and not the one she remembered first. The crowd was silent and no one had to strain to hear her even though at times her voice threatened to dip to a whisper.

Flynn went next. His speech, if one could call it such, was short but powerful, speaking of Alexei from the view of a knight. He spoke of a man who was loyal, who was fair, who was a hero, who inspired his comrades and encouraged everyone to give everything they had. A man who led by example and talent and not sentiment. His voice soared where Estelle's had remained soft and low, commanding the same attention as she had but in a different way.

He stood next to Estelle, matching her perfectly in the ramrod straight set of his spine, and as if following an unspoken command, Raven stepped forward.

If it were possible it went even quieter when he cleared his throat. Raven's speech was shorter than either of the other two but his years in command showed in the way he spoke. Not only that but Schwann was notorious, an icon, known to be fair and loyal and steady, the type of captain that rookies hoped to be assigned to. That lent him more than anything else, and he likely could have said anything and it would have been moving. But it wasn't enough to say anything, and Raven spoke not of the previously unknown, like Estelle, nor of the recollections of a knight of his superior, but that of an equal, of a friend, not a tyrant. It was enough, he thought as he eyed the rows of young people, the young commandant, the even younger princess, that it was short. Raven's speech would have been peppered with jokes, with silly stories; Captain Schwann's was what the people needed to hear to feel better, the type of speech that a captain needed to give.

When there were no more words left to say, Raven, Captain Schwann, stayed where he was but held the  ceremonial sword out in front of him like an offering.

“Rest in peace.”

Breaths released and steadied, and that was that.

* * *

 

Raven spent the majority of the day after the ceremony by himself leaving Repede to follow Flynn around. He went back to one of the flooded rooms inside Zaude and sat on a railing or half submerged steps and thought about everything there was to think about. His friends, now buried, the guild, the knights, Estelle, Flynn. Yuri...

How deep the water was. 

What he was going to do and how he was going to do it. Because he honestly had no idea. He made a promise to Brave Vesperia; his life was theirs now and he owed at least that much to them, but he also owed other people debts and to pay for his actions. He’d done so much bad in the name of nothing and it made him feel so inhuman (and that had nothing to do with the blastia in his chest, this time). 

So as the sun was setting Raven headed up the walk to Flynn’s ship and down the hall and to his office with more determination that he’d shown in a very,  _ very _ long time and a small bundle of clothing in his hands. This was something he knew he could do. Knew he  _ had _ to do or he wouldn’t be able to continue on. 

And after that he would make sure everyone else would carry on. Either with or without him; that was going to be up to Flynn. 

Flynn’s response to Raven’s knock on his closed door was barely audible and he found the commandant sitting at his desk his head in his hands. He looked worse than ever.  _ Guess that ceremony took its toll on all of us _ . 

Flynn looked up and for a moment it appeared he was contemplating even standing, but formality won out and he stood slowly only to lean over and support himself on his desk. That was the only formality he could muster. “Do you need something?”

Repede’s head poked out from around the desk and stared at Raven a moment before he came around and sat in front of the desk entirely. 

Raven nodded and didn’t flinch at the obvious venom in Flynn’s voice. Stepping up to the worn desk Raven laid down the pile of cloth he was holding in front of Flynn. His captain’s uniform perfectly folded and his sword laid atop them.

Flynn’s eyes snapped up wide before narrowing and finally closing. He hung his head and took a deep breath before straightening up and placing his hands behind his back. “I guess I can take this as your resignation.”

“Sir,” Raven stepped back and took a knee, head bowed. “I can no longer up hold the vows that I took seventeen years ago. I have lost my honor and shamed the the good of the knights with my actions. I return my sword and await your judgment.” 

Flynn spent a good twenty seconds staring down at Raven, vulnerable and prostrate before him. He looked to the neatly folded uniform and blade then back to the man in front of him. His hands clenched and he grit his teeth.

“Stand up,” he demanded after a time and Raven obeyed immediately without scrambling, straightening and leaving himself open with his hands at his sides.

And without another word or any sort of warning, Flynn pulled back his fist and punched him with all his strength right in the face, sending Raven flying backwards to bump up against the desk.

“How could you?” Flynn snarled and didn’t give Raven a chance to recover at all before he lashed out with both hands, tangled them in his collar and hauled him back forward until they were practically nose to nose. “I trusted you; You were my thrice damned captain and I  _ trusted _ you!” The area around Raven’s eye was already beginning to redden from the blow and Flynn could take no satisfaction in it at all, even as he pushed hard with both hands against Raven’s chest to shove him up against a bookshelf with a clatter.

His hands hit something hard and unnatural and Flynn paused for a moment to let his breath catch even as a few thick tomes fell from their places and onto the floor.

“How long were you in cahoots with that monster?” he carried on with his tirade even as his voice dipped low and furious, “Was it worth it to betray everyone who’d ever admired you,  _ respected _ you? Did it ever mean anything? How could you?”

Raven just watched him, accepting all of it and knowing better than to try and answer. He watched Flynn who suddenly couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from his chest.

“He could have destroyed  _ everything _ ,” Flynn shouted but didn’t blink or look away, “He would have! And you’d have let him. You practically gift-wrapped Lady Estellise for him and look at her now, look what you’ve done to her! And then you just--you just come back like it’s nothing and everyone’s okay, like it means nothing, just because Yuri said you could. You’re a dog, Raven, Alexei’s dog.  _ I trusted you _ ,” his tone went from thorny to some painful broken thing and it wasn’t a commander reaming out a traitor anymore, Flynn was speaking to a mentor, who’d shown him the kind of leader he wanted to be with strength, loyalty, and quiet dignity. His heart rushed to the point that he felt almost lightheaded and a hint of red framed his vision and made it swim, and Flynn so rarely got so angry to the point that he could hardly think of anything outside of being so absolutely furious.

He couldn’t erase the feeling of his palms hitting edges.

“I deserve an answer!” he spat and punched the wall this time instead of Raven’s other eye.

One of the pictures fell, the glass in the frame cracking with a snap.

_ You owe me. _

“That’s why I came here, Flynn.” Raven said evenly trying to catch blue eyes as they stayed glued on his chest. “Because you do deserve an answer; more than anyone aside from the Princess and she already knows a good deal of it.” 

Flynn didn’t move and Raven slowly raised his left arm and pulled on his collar stretching the fabric to his already over sized guild attire. Ignoring the way his jacket fell his shoulder Raven pulled until the golden sun in his chest was completely revealed and the orange glow from his blastia was casting a small glow onto Flynn’s whit armor. 

This time Flynn moved. He moved back and fast his eyes never leaving the blastia and his jaw dropped like someone seeing the impossible. It took a minute before he could speak, or really just stutter. “W...what  _ is _ that?”

“The only reason I’m standing here and talking to you.” Raven let go of his collar and straightened his jacket. “I died ten years ago and Alexei gave me life. He  _ gave me life _ by sticking a blastia in my chest and from that moment on he owned me. He could have turned this off at any moment and I would have dropped like a stone in water and I was weak and put my tail between my legs and followed him like a good hound.

“It doesn’t excuse my actions. It doesn’t excuse what I did to her highness or you or my knights. It doesn’t excuse  _ anything.  _ If I were a true man I would have chosen that death and I can’t explain why I never did. Fear or some shred of loyalty that Alexei lost when he lost his humanity or maybe I just didn’t know how to make my own choices anymore, I really don’t know. But that’s the cold hard truth of it.” Raven reached up and grabbed at his blastia, feeling the warmth from the core and the cool around the edges. 

“I knew you were destined to do great things, Flynn. I knew that from the moment I saw you standing in my office to tell me you were transferring to my squad. You didn’t deserve me as a teacher and I’m sorry. Even if sorry can’t cut it.”

_ That’s all I got _ . 

Flynn recoiled from Raven’s words as if he’d been hit. He stared with undisguised fascination and horror at the blastia; it was almost beautiful and it definitely would have been if it hadn’t been put into someone’s body like an artificial limb. He’d never seen one like that; all the ones he’d ever seen had been bohdo blastia or barrier blastia or aque blastia...normal things that remained blessedly unattached to anything outside of the actual device.

“Sorry...what’s sorry anyway?” he finally asked helplessly, “It doesn’t fix anything, it doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t change anything.” He paced back and forth in a manner reminiscent of an agitated beast because the tension itched and had to go somewhere, and Flynn didn’t feel quite right about hitting him again. “It doesn’t...” he thought of Estelle and how she’d changed since he’d last seen her that he knew couldn’t all have to do with Yuri. She wasn’t the only person Alexei had ever hurt, he knew -hell, the proof was standing right here in front of him!- but it was easier to think that way if he didn’t have to see his former teacher standing in front of him with a quickly developing shiner blooming on his eye.

Flynn thought he was done being surprised, or at least unpleasantly so. It seemed he still had a lot to learn.

Flynn stepped away and dropped his head into his hands and dug his thumbs into his temples to stave off a headache.

And he hated to admit it, but he wasn’t sure if he would have chosen death in the same situation, He might have but to give up, to lose all chances of making something better? Flynn had never had to make that choice.

“What do you intend to do from now on?”

“Ultimately?” Raven finally gave in and put a hand to his watering eye and wiped away the involuntary tears. “That’s up to you. Yuri might have claimed me as guild property, but I’m a knight first and foremost. I always have been and that means you’ve got the last say. If you want to ring me up for treason you have every right and I’ll own that.”

Flynn snorted.

_ Huh? _ Raven raised an eyebrow.

“Yuri would kill me.” Flynn whispered once before speaking louder. “Yuri would kill me if I did that.” 

“Er...” And that was all Raven could manage because really? What could he say to that when that was the last thing he was expecting to hear. 

Flynn pulled in a breath and looked Raven in the face.

“If I had you tried, Yuri would kill me,” he repeated, “And I don't care how nice she is, the  _ princess _ would kill me too. God only knows why, but that's how it is.” He sighed and took several steps towards his desk until he was close enough to lean on it, which he did. “If it's my decision, then this is it.”

Raven was staring at him with an expression of open bewilderment, like he couldn't believe the words coming out of Flynn's mouth.

Honestly, Flynn thought, feeling just a tiny bit more like himself than he had in days, it was kind of nice to get the jump on him.

“I accept your resignation under one condition.” Raven stiffened. Flynn continued, “You will stay with Brave Vesperia for as long as they'll have you. Protect them and use the experiences you've had to keep them safe. You can consider any of Yuri's conditions mine, whatever they may be.”

Raven blinked. Once. Twice. The determination in Flynn’s eyes was solid. He actually meant that and Raven couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle. “Dyin’s too easy huh?” 

“Yeah, it is.”

“Then I’ve got a lot ta live up to.” Raven sighed as he looked over the commandant sagging on the desk in front of him. 

Flynn wasn’t just tired or angry or confused or anything that he was. He was killing himself. Over the course of a week he’d lost a good deal of weight and his already pale skin was pasty and his eyes constantly rimmed in dark circle. 

If Raven was going to live to Yuri’s words then he had to start now.

“Flynn,” He said simply and it was weird not addressing the kid in a military tone, but also kind of nice. “Yuri told me to keep living. To find something to fight for and stay alive to fight for it and I’m gunna. It’s going to take some time, but I’m gunna.”

Flynn looked up at him, an eyebrow raised, and Raven continued. “I think he’d tell you the same thing.” He shook his head. “Nah, I  _ know _ he’d tell you the same thing if he walked through that door right now. He’d punch you a good one and say those exact words.” 

And suddenly Flynn was bracing himself on the desk breathing hard. He knew where Raven was going with this conversation and Raven knew it was kind of cruel to bring it up right after....well  _ everything _ , but he was going to fight and live and he had decided, during all those hours of thinking, he was going to fight and live for these kids.

Raven took a steady step forward and put a firm hand on Flynn’s shoulder and the commandant looked up at him, his eyes begging him not to say it. Not to say another word. “Flynn, you need to stop. You need to stop here and continue on out there in a way that Yuri would want you to.”

Flynn shook his head in silent denial, once, twice, but Raven didn’t disappear or do any of the things that he’d have done if Flynn was dreaming. No, not dreaming. This was no dream, this was a nightmare. This was a week-long nightmare that he couldn’t seem to wake up from that wasn’t a nightmare at all.

It was just life and it was time, he knew, to stop being such a child.

His vision greyed and went fuzzy around the edges and Flynn closed his eyes, dropped his face into his palms and couldn’t look up.

“He’d really hate this, wouldn’t he?” he asked tonelessly without expecting any sort of answer. Flynn didn’t need a reply because he could hear it himself, could hear Yuri in his head, quietly furious and absolutely indignant, demanding to know what the  _ actual hell _ Flynn thought he was doing acting like this when there were so many more important things to do.

The heavy hand on his shoulder pressed down, firm and steadying, and Flynn should have gotten up and shook it off. He didn’t, though, just sagged hard and heavy until his desk and that hand were the only things holding him up.

“I...I  _ can’t _ ,” he whispered. “I know he’d hate it. I know. That’s why this is so...and everyone else, it’s so...” He blinked dazedly. “I can’t.”

“You’ve gotta, for your sake. For everyone else’s too. You need to stop.”

Flynn’s hope had been dead for days and the little bit that still breathed shattered like eggshell in four little words. It was a necessary cruelty, he’d see at some point, a kindness even, but all Flynn could feel right now was despair. He was just one guy, one guy who’d just recently made captain, and he wasn’t prepared for this. He wasn’t prepared to lead the entire military, he wasn’t prepared to deal with the fate of the world, and he wasn’t prepared to have to admit that his best friend was dead and never coming back.

“Estelle can’t stop until you do.”

Flynn openly flinched and let the shudder go through his frame. 

“I know that. I  _ know _ that. I just didn’t want to believe it. Sodia said it too and I just...” Flynn trailed off and blinked away the heat set deep behind his eyes, the threat of tears that he wouldn’t give into,  _ ever _ , even when one or two slipped out only to be scrubbed away with a ferocious hand. “How am I ever going to tell them?”

“You’ll be honest,” Raven said quietly from where he still hovered above him, “That’s all you can do. Just...do it soon, yeah?”

“Tomorrow,” Flynn mumbled. “I’ll...tomorrow.” Whatever he said in the middle was incomprehensible for his words had begun to slur. From exhaustion, clearly, emphasized by the way the commandant went abruptly limp and dropped, barely missing cracking his head on the edge of his own desk and sagging to to the floor, out like a light.

Raven caught Flynn’s upper arm just in time to keep him from dropping completely to the floor. He couldn’t believe it had really gotten that bad. But he could.  _ Yuri, you’ve got one hell of a best friend. _

Luckily, Flynn’s private quarters were only down the hall so Raven scooped him up, cringing a bit at just how light the kid really was and quickly dashed the short distance after making sure the coast was clear. It’d be pretty bad if a knight caught Flynn out cold. Even worse if he caught Flynn out cold in a traitorous captain’s arms. 

He placed Flynn on his bed and didn’t linger until he was outside in the hall and contemplated posting himself by the door. Even if someone came for Flynn he probably wouldn’t wake up, but it would still be best to make sure he got as much rest as he could.

Because really everything was up to him now. Raven had done what he could and it wasn’t much, but he had to have faith that his words got through. That Flynn would really do what was right by Yuri. 

_ Tomorrow’s gonna suck _ . 

* * *

 

The first thing Judy noticed when Raven walked up to the group at breakfast was his eye. Black and swollen and red on the inside, but she didn’t comment on it. Mostly because it looked like he was actually really hurting, but also because he didn’t sit down at the table with herself, Rita, Karol and Estelle. He stood at the end and smiled weakly before informing them that Flynn really needed to talk to all of them in his office. 

And the first thing that crossed through Judith’s mind was  _ finally _ . It didn’t take a lot of math to figure out that the black eye and this up and coming conversation with the commandant was connected. Maybe Raven had managed to convince Flynn that it was time to stop.

It’d been a hard week. One of the hardest Judy had in a long,  _ long  _ time and in a way she was glad it would be over soon. She didn’t want to stop, that was the last thing she really wanted to do; admit that this person she’d met under the strangest circumstances had become her friend for such a short time before dying. 

Yuri had changed her so much and she still owed him more than she could ever repay in a lifetime let alone a lifetime cut far far too short. But she wasn’t considered the reasonable one for nothing. She knew as well as everyone else that it was time; she was just the only one outside of Raven willing to admit it freely. 

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt her to give up the little bit of hope Estelle and Karol had kept alive in her. It hurt, a lot, but it would hurt even more if this carried on and they carried on and the realization would come just a little too late. 

Everyone stood up from the table slowly, even Rita, and followed Raven who led the way with his usual bounce in his step. Which was sort of infuriating and funny at the same time. It was clearly annoying Karol, at least. 

Once at Flynn’s office Raven didn’t even knock before opening the door and holding it open for them and Judy made sure to say a quiet thank you as she walked by and planted herself right next to the door once it closed.

Raven stood in front of the door handle, arms crossed. He was expecting a fight and so should she. 

Judy had never been in Flynn’s office before, it was pretty typical, she guessed. Books and papers surrounded a desk with a couple chairs pushed up against the wall that no one even looked at before spreading themselves around the room.

Flynn stood from his seat and walked slowly around to the front and leaned up against it to face them. He looked tired and weak, but somehow not as tired as when Judy saw him yesterday. Still, he needed another good day in bed which, unfortunately, she knew he wasn’t going to get. She might not be very old in Krityan years, but she was definitely older than Flynn and her heart ached for him.

So much responsibility and power on such young shoulders. She kind of knew what that was like; when she thought she was the only one willing to go to the extremes to save the world and her friends. Yuri had proved her wrong in that as well. Which meant that this conversation was going to be one of the most important ones she’d witness. So settling up against the wall Judy took up her usual laid back posture, but with only a titch more tension than usual.

She might need to move in the next couple minutes. Move fast.

Flynn stood straight-backed and surveyed the group as they came in. This was the right decision, he told himself firmly, even though just thinking about what he had to do made him want to crawl right back into bed and never come out again. His resolve cemented when he saw the little guild leader, Karol, and then when he took a really good, long look at Estelle. He didn’t remember anything between his conversation with Raven and waking up in bed this morning, which said more about him than he was at all comfortable with.

This had to stop. No one could go on like this, not him, not any of them, and at this point he was likely the only one anyone would listen to.

Raven had been right, as much as it chafed him to admit.

It was up to him.

“I think you all probably know what I need to talk to you about.”

The already tense mood went even darker when he spoke and Karol visibly bristled. His eyes darted from Flynn in front of them to Judy by the wall and Raven positioned in front of the door, then back to Flynn.

“What is it?” he finally asked when it became clear that no one else was going to say anything. Flynn’s expression remained calm but there was a wildness there as well, proving that he wasn’t as at ease as he seemed.

“I thought I’d let you all know before I announced it to the knights. You deserve to hear it first,” Flynn began. “I’m calling off the search for Yuri.”

The room exploded with noise as both Karol and Estelle protested. The silence on Judy’s part and Raven’s look of unsurprise rang louder than voices.

“What?! No!” Estelle exclaimed, green eyes wide, “You can’t do that!”

Karol couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Flynn...Flynn Scifo Yuri’s _best_ _friend_ was going to stop looking for him when he needed him the most?? 

“How could you?!” Karol shouted, hearing his voice squeak. “Flynn, you’re...you’re supposed to be his friend! His best friend! How could you just... _ give up _ on him?!”

Flynn didn’t bother to hide a flinch as he looked at the young guild leader. “I know it looks like I’m giving up, but I’m not.”

“Yes! Yes you are!!” Karol shook his head and backed away from the commandant towards the door “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I-” He looked up as he bumped into cloth and found Raven staring down at him; one eye swollen shut. Karol jumped forward and pointed at him. “This is your fault! You convinced him didn’t you! You wanted to give up after three days.  _ Three days _ and you...” 

Karol had to stop. His breath was hitching in his lungs and he was somewhere between just letting some comprehensible scream out and crying. Or both. 

Raven sighed a little and hung his head, but he remained silent. That, for Karol, was worse than him trying to convince him otherwise.

Everyone had given up. Everyone but him and Estelle and he couldn’t believe that he’d spent this past time thinking he had all these people backing him up. Hoping and praying and looking with him. He was wrong. So, so wrong.

Rita he could understand; the mage never tried to hide her lack of love for Yuri, but Judy? She was a part of their guild! She promised to make up for betraying them...Raven too.  _ Raven too _ .  

At least Estelle seemed as angry as he was. She knew. She knew Yuri was still alive because as ludicrous as it sounded Karol truly believed that. He could  _ feel _ it in his very core. Yuri was alive and needed them and everyone could call him crazy all they wanted, but he wasn’t going to believe otherwise. 

Karol sniffed before looking up at Judy and Raven and back at Flynn, and then finally giving into the tears he’d wanted to shed for over a week now. “How...how can you all just say he’s dead?”

It was quiet a moment before Judy, silent Judy, shifted a little and shook her head. “No one here said that Yuri was dead. If anyone could pop up a month from now and ask us where we’ve been it would be him, but we have to keep walking so he can catch up to us, right?”

“That is the stupidest excuse I’ve ever heard,”  Karol spat and wiped away tears and she stiffened, wounded though she clearly tried to not show it.

“I know it’s hard,” Flynn said gently from his corner, “But it’s been a week. Yuri would hate this; if you know him you  _ know _ that he would. It’s not fair to you, to him, or to me either. He’d be so upset. I know it seems like I’m giving up, I do, but I think that Yuri would rather we focus on things like the Adephagos. That’s what he’d care most about and since he’s not here to do it, I’ll care for him. What good is it to lose the world? What if we missed an important chance because we were too focused on other things? Do you really think that Yuri would like that?” 

Karol froze and it was clear when the words hit because the tears came faster and he stood statue-still in the middle of Flynn’s office.  And then suddenly there was movement and Karol found himself enfolded in a hug. Judy knelt down and reeled him in, ignoring all pretense of pride and letting him openly bawl into her shoulder.

“I...I...” he mumbled in between great hiccuping sobs  when he could, peering up from Judith’s embrace , “I don’t want to give up on Yuri. I don’t! He’s the first person who ever really believed in me, who assumed that I could do it without thinking I was a liability or a liar. I feel like it’s letting him down to just give up after only a week.” he stopped then, clenched his fists at his sides, and then continued, “But at the same time, he’d be so--he’d be s-so sad. He wouldn’t even want to look at us if we let the world go for him. And I hate it! I hate that he’s gone and I hate that I can’t  _ do _ anything and more than anything I hate that you’re right.” Karol wiped angrily at his eyes  and Judith let him go, and he straightened . “So...if you’re right and we can’t do anything to help Yuri, we should focus on what we can do something about, right?”

Flynn relaxed minutely, miserable though he was.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I think,” he said soberly. This didn’t feel like any sort of victory he’d had before even though he’d technically ‘won’. Flynn took no satisfaction in it, only a sense of deep loss. He might have continued if not for the fact that Estelle had taken advantage of Karol’s acceptance and Judy’s momentary distraction to step forward into his personal space. “Princess?”

“I can’t  _ believe _ you,” she said. In contrast to Karol her voice didn’t go higher than a whisper, remaining low but fierce and perfectly audible. “How could you?” Her words shook. “You’re supposed to be his friend.”

“I  _ am  _ his friend,” Flynn replied just as quietly, “That’s why I have to do this. Lady Estellise, please...”

“No! I won’t accept it. Not from you, not from  _ anyone _ .” Green eyes blazed and Estelle blinked away tears of her own. They wouldn’t fall, she wouldn’t let them even though all she wanted to do was cry. “He’s not dead, he’s not gone, you’re wrong and you don’t  _ care _ !” Her whole frame trembled and she couldn’t tell anymore whether it was from exhaustion, rage, or grief. Maybe all of them. “Why can’t you just--”

“Just what?” Flynn snapped suddenly, the helplessness feeling like it was going to come up around hids ears and swallow him whole,“Lady Estellise, just what? Have you even looked at yourself in the last week?  _ Damnit _ . You’re falling apart. You’re not sleeping at all, you’re not eating. What do you think’s going to happen to you?” The more he spoke the louder his voice got and Estelle straightened up and furiously rose her own to meet his head on.

“I don’t care!”

“Damnit, you  _ should _ !” he snarled, “Yuri’d care! I care! Your friends care! You’ve got a demolished city and a country to think about; do you think acting like this is going to make him come back? Do you think it’d make him happy at all?!  _ Look at you-- _ oof _!”  _ And the rest of Flynn’s tirade flew out the window when Estelle choked on a sob and unthinkingly reeled her fist back to slam him hard in the ribs.

The room went dead silent and no one moved, not even Flynn who’d been hit or Estelle who’d hit him.  Karol and Rita openly stared, Judy had taken a single step in preparation to step in but no more than that.

And then Flynn wavered on his feet.

Estelle unclenched her fist and as if moving without her consent, her hand slid down to feel ribs that hadn’t stuck out a week ago, and Flynn let her touch. Flynn should have been a boulder but she’d been able to move him even as she was now.

All of her fury drained out of her like she’d suddenly been run through and riddled with holes.

“...Flynn?” she whispered, blinking quickly. Her voice cracked. 

Flynn could have yelled more; she didn’t look like she would be shouting back anytime soon. She might actually listen to him now if he did. 

Or maybe he didn’t have to.

“Yuri is my best friend,” he told her gently, half-begging her to understand. If anyone really would at this point, it would be her. “And there’s  _ nothing  _ I wouldn’t do for him. But we need to move on.”

He didn’t have to hit her back or shout. He didn’t need to. Was this how it had felt to be Raven last night talking to him? Estelle’s eyes had gone huge and she stared up at him. Even now he could see her shake.

“Say something, please,” he encouraged and dared to pat her hand still settled along his side.

Something cracked in her.

“I’m so sorry!” It was a far cry from anger as Estelle choked on tears and finally  _ broke _ , all of her denial shattered into pieces. “I didn’t--I didn’t mean to--”

“Yes, you did.” Estelle made to jerk away from him but Flynn reached out and gripped her by the shoulder much like Raven had the night before, squeezed like that could possibly hold her together. “It’s alright.  _ I understand _ .”

There was no sobbing or hiccuping in the way Estelle cried, with none of Karol’s sniffles or Flynn’s own from that morning when he’d first woken up, prepared to do what he had to. The only sound she made was a quiet, helpless keening noise that came from deep in her throat, like an injured animal. Her knees gave out and Flynn sunk to the ground with her, throwing away rank and propriety to pull her to him. She buried her face in his shoulder and clenched her hands in his uniform.

It was hard to tell when exactly the tears tapered off but eventually, Estelle pushed herself gently away, more gently even than she would have normally. Flynn let her, stood, and then helped her to her feet. It was hard to tell if anyone else was even breathing, so silent was every soul in Flynn’s office. Estelle swayed and suddenly Judy was standing at her elbow, fingers wrapping gently around her arms to keep her upright.

“If it’s all the same to everyone,” she said evenly, as if daring anyone to even dream of stopping her, “I’m going to go make sure Estelle gets some sleep.” Without being asked Raven moved away from the door and Judy didn’t wait for a reply before she was steering an unprotesting Estelle out of the room, leaving dead silence in her wake.

Flynn ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up.

“Okay,” he said, looking at them all in turn and feeling like he’d been raked over a washboard, “Lets talk about what needs to happen now,”

* * *

 

It felt like some warped dream. Like all the pain and emotion he’d felt was some effect of a fever and couldn’t possibly be real. Time went by so slowly at yet far too quickly. The sun rose, but before he knew it, it was night again and he was in the dark left to wonder and float around in some nightmare that he couldn’t escape.

It wasn’t until Yuri’s eyes focused on the support beams that ran along his bedroom ceiling that he remembered everything in a rush that threatened to take the air right from his lungs. He had fallen. Fallen an impossible distance from the top of Zaude.

Yuri knew he should  be dead. He definitely should have been dead. He  _ was _ dead...so why wasn’t he?

And that was when Duke showed up in his doorway with the lamest excuse for saving him. If he only wanted the sword why fly Yuri’s half dead body all the way back to Zaphias? Why save him at all? Why was he even at Zaude in the first place...aside from the obvious. 

How on Earth did he save him?

He didn’t get any answers of course because Duke turned tail and waltzed right out of his room with that ‘tch’ that Yuri found more and more infuriating every time he heard it. And Yuri went to follow, but barely made it half a step before he found himself on his floor curled up holding his stomach and trying not to vomit the nothing inside him.

He really should have been dead.

Yuri laid there until his breathing evened out and he pushed himself up onto his knees and looked around. It was so quiet. He could tell night was falling, but the sunset had a weird purple glow to it and Yuri vaguely remembered a monster between the clouds. Crawling over to the window Yuri hoisted himself up, draped over the sill and stared up at the sky. 

There were no clouds, but there were no stars popping out in the dusk. Purple streaks waved through the atmosphere, threatening to strangle the very earth itself. It was terrifying and yet beautiful and he spent a good half hour just looking. Looking and thinking. Zaude was so hard to remember and everything about it blurred together in one giant muddled thought. Yeager and having to swim through flooded rooms, Alexei, Flynn showing up and-

_ Getting shot!  _ Yuri jolted up and fell back towards his bed, but missed and hit the ground again hard. This time he let his head fall limply back onto his old stiff mattress and he just breathed. That’s right, Flynn had saved him and had been injured and Yuri would have stayed but Alexei…

Then there was the battle with the commandant. It wasn’t very long and in the end they failed. The Adephagos was released and that was that. He remembered running and diving when the apatheia had fallen from the sky...but he hadn’t fallen?

No he hadn’t fallen. He was watching the Adephagos because he didn’t need to worry about the rest of his group. They wouldn’t get taken out by the likes of a giant falling gem. Even Raven was too quick on his feet.

_ Armor _ , he had heard armor after silence rang through the air and he was so sure it was Flynn. 

Resting a hand to his stomach, Yuri shut his eyes tight. It wasn’t Flynn. Flynn was hurt and the apatheia had fallen on the lift they rode up in. Alexei was dead- Yuri heard that much with his own ears and that was probably the starkest memory he had. 

There was armor and then pain and then air and then nothing.

_ Armor and red.  _ Blood, his blood on a knife...and red… _ Sodia! _

Red hair and violet eyes full of hate and determination ran him through before he sailed through the air. And that was it. That was all he could remember minus a few fleeting thoughts before blackness had claimed him. 

Stupid notions and sentiments. Lame last words for Yuri Lowell. He had been sad more than anything. Sad that he wasn’t going to get to see Brave Vesperia grow into the great guild it was destined to become. Sad that he wouldn’t be able to teach Raven a few more things about living or Judy a little bit more about saving the world for everyone. That he wasn’t going to see Estelle again and that he wouldn’t see Flynn become the greatest knight the Empire would ever see.

“Damn, that’s cheesey.” 

He felt so strange. He hurt, more than he could ever remember hurting before and he was glad he was alive, but at the same time there was some pit in his stomach that had nothing to do with the hole on right side. He was scared.  He was scared when he should have been angry. he could remember the air sweeping past him and it was almost invigorating to be free falling like that. But he had been alone.

Opening his eyes Yuri looked around his tiny room. It had gotten pretty dark and the candle on his small table was begging to be lit. It was tinier than he remembered it. Someone had burned it, quite a bit of it.

_ How long have I been out? _ Sudden panic threatened to grip him. How long ago was Zaude? He had no reference of time. It could have been a day or two or it could have been weeks. Well, it couldn’t have been that long considering he still hurt this much. Clearly Duke didn’t know any healing arts. Not that he would have been as good as Estelle with them. No one was as good as Estelle.

_ Estelle _ … who wasn’t there. Estelle or Flynn or Judy or Karol or Rita or hell, even the old man. They weren’t there and Yuri really shouldn’t care. Hopefully they were helping the world and trying to save the people. He would probably yell at them if he had woken up with them sitting there doing nothing. He wasn’t worth the world, but at the same time? 

It hurt a little. He felt so vulnerable and weak and Yuri just wasn’t used to that. He’d never been  _ weak _ . Maybe not as strong as Flynn, but he never considered himself helpless in any way. He’d never stand for that.  _ Never _ . He had gotten so used to traveling around with everyone that being alone suddenly wasn’t as fun as he used to find it. 

Granted even then he was never alone because he always had Repede, but even his loyal friend was gone at the moment; hopefully standing by Flynn’s side. 

_ All right candle, lets do this _ . Yuri slowly dragged himself up onto his hands and pushed himself to his feet and didn’t move until he was sure his feet were steady underneath him. Then he took one small, apprehensive step and put just enough weight down on his foot to make sure he’d stay standing because falling earlier had really hurt.  _ So, feet, you really do work _ . 

It was slow going, but Yuri made it across his room and to the small table. He groped around and found his match box; almost empty now save two matches. Had Duke really stayed with him  _ that _ long? The tiny candle blazed to life and Yuri let out a small breath. It was warm and comforting and reminded him that not everything in the world was falling apart or a jumble mess of confusion at the moment. 

And that’s where Yuri stayed for a little until the wind picked up outside with a low hum and threatened to blow the flame out. The cool air felt nice against Yuri’s hot skin and he decided that maybe some fresh air might be better than collapsing back in bed for he moment. Although, those stairs were going to be a challenge. 

* * *

 

Estelle asked Judy to drop her off just outside Zaphias. She could have brought her in further but honestly, if Estelle was going to have any hope of fixing this she’d be best seeing as much of the city as she could and that included coming in from the outside. Besides, the walk would hopefully help clear her head.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come?” Judith had asked and Estelle had shaken her head. She hadn’t realized it before but really, no one gave her enough credit. Judy had been a godsend through this entire ordeal, at times the only remotely steady one, the glue that held them all together, and Estelle had hugged her firmly when her feet hit the ground.

“Thank you, but I think I need to do this on my own.” She gestured next to her where Repede sat, his tail lying flat against the ground. “You have important things to do, right? I do too. And I’ll be okay; Repede’s with me, after all.”

And then when she couldn’t even see Ba’ul in the sky anymore, she’d begun to walk.

The damage was clear even from outside the city. The tall buildings she remembered seeing so clearly from when she and Yuri had first left so long ago were gone and the few that remained were clearly in disrepair. Her stomach shifted. If that was what the royal and upper quarters looked like, what sort of state was the lower quarter in?

Estelle didn’t know how many people had perished in the rampage and without thinking about it, she found herself taking the back roads and alleys that Yuri had shown her that first  time, making her way towards the lower quarter. She didn’t think she could handle seeing all the nobles right then and if anyone had stayed safe in their homes, it would have been them. No, her priority was the lower quarter where Yuri had grown up, where people didn’t have all the protections that the nobles would have.

It would undoubtedly be worse than anywhere else, she thought.

Estelle was right.

The wreckage was bad and the structures that still stood showed their damage like war scars, and she went cold. What if no one had survived? What if there was no one left and all she would be able to find was an empty city? What if, what if…

For once, Repede let her briefly tangle her fingers in the thick ruff at his neck.

She stopped abruptly in the middle of an alley when she heard voices and Estelle peered out to see what was going on--and stopped. There were people knee-deep in the rubble of a crumbled building, hauling out bricks and shouting encouragement to one another, men and women and children alike, working hard. They were dirty and looked tired but they were  _ alive _ and seemed unharmed. It seemed that most everyone was out and about like they were working on areas in shifts and Estelle was so relieved that she could have cried.

Her people,  _ Yuri’s _ people, were safe. Worse for wear, certainly, but they were alive.

Before she could think about what she was doing, Estelle was scrambling out of her hiding place and running full tilt towards the group of people clustered around the old man, Hanks, who seemed to be barking orders the loudest.

He gaped when he saw her.

“You, you’re the young lady with Yuri--”

And Estelle flung her arms around him and squeezed tightly, much to the astonishment of him  _ and _ the paused crowd.

“I’m  _ so _ glad you’re okay,” she said breathlessly, and she really could have cried.

“You as well, miss,” Hanks replied with no small amount of bewilderment.

And then suddenly Repede, who’d been next to her the whole time, raised his head, sniffed the air, and bolted off in the opposite direction. Estelle gave a harried goodbye and sprinted after him, through alleys and broken down roads, tripping over and through piles of rubble until she was practically covered in a coating of fine dust.

“Repede, where are you going? What is it?  _ Wait up, please _ !”

He didn’t wait up though and Estelle continued to chase him through the lower quarter until he arrived in what was clearly the residential district, and then he stopped, let out a round of barks and a single howl.

Estelle froze.

There, hanging tightly onto the railing by the steps, was Yuri.

Yuri, whole and hale and  _ alive _ .

“ _ Yuri!!! _ ”

And Estelle found speed she didn’t know she had and ran to him like he was the only thing that mattered.

* * *

 

Yuri heard Repede first before anything else. He knew that bark anywhere and he had half expected the dog to coming running out of an alley alone, but he should have known better. He should have known that neither Flynn nor Estelle...or anyone in their group really...would let him be alone. Repede might be fully capable, but he deserved isolation as much as the next person which was not at all. 

Then Yuri heard the greatest thing he’d ever heard in his life. Estelle’s voice. It was distant at first, begging Repede to slow down and wait up for her and then it was there in front of him. Right up the ramp towards the aqua well.

Then pink popped into sight and green eyes widened as she called his name and before he knew it Yuri had an armful of princess barrelling into him.

And for a moment he forgot about the pain in his side and the way his breaths came in quick succession just from walking down a few stairs and how his face still felt a little hot in the cool night air. He didn’t care about any of that; she was here in his arms. She was here, alive. She was  _ here _ . 

Unfortunately, it didn’t last very long because a princess in motion stays in motion and Yuri found the pain lancing up his side a little too much to bear. Subtle as he could he hugged her and slowly pushed her back before she could fall over with him and he found himself grasping her arms a little tighter to stay up right.

“Whoa there.” He laughed over a grunt of pain. “It’s nice to see you too.”

Green eyes looked up at him watering. “Oh Yuri, you’re here! I knew it. I knew you’d be here. I’m so glad.”

“Yeah, I’m here. Where else would I be?” Yuri asked genuinely confused before it hit him. If Repede was with Estelle and he was alone when he woke up and Duke had saved him…

_ Damn it all to hell they must have thought…. _

“Estelle…” Yuri’s voice dropped. 

They must have thought he was dead. For however long he’d been out cold in his bed they thought he was laying at the bottom of the ocean or worse. Opening his mouth to continue Yuri got cut off as Estelle suddenly looked up at him, her gaze going from complete joy to blatant concern.

_ Oh crap _ . 

Estelle took in the pale, sick set of Yuri’s face and frowned. He looked  _ terrible _ , which honestly wasn’t that much of a surprise, all things considering. Truly she was happy enough that he was here, that he was alive, and it made every little thing worth it.

She reached up and gently brushed a hand to his temple and slid it down past his jaw, over his neck, and settled at his shoulder. His hands were tight and nearly white-knuckled on her arms. Her other hand touched his forehead.

Warm, she noted, very warm.

“What happened to you? Are you hurt?” she asked, and without waiting for a reply a circle lit up under her feet and Estelle sent a pulse of bright healing energy washing over his body, meant for the general bumps and bruises and scrapes. The fever would take some time and care, though, and it was something that couldn’t really be taken care of with magic. “You’re sick…”

Yuri shook his head. “Nah, just a little banged up. That’s all.” 

And if that wasn’t the lie to end all lies then Repede wasn’t glaring at him knowingly. If that dog could talk Yuri would be the definition of screwed. Granted it was going to be hard to get out of this one...he could barely stand as it was. Estelle was going to have a field day with him.

And by field day he meant a complete freak out. No...he couldn’t do that to her. He had already put her through enough, that much was obvious. Where would he even begin to tell her that he’d fallen because-

_ Oh, oh no _ . Yuri was not going to give Sodia the luxury of being a tattle tail.  Not a chance; he’d deal with her on his own. He’d have to figure that out eventually. Right now...

Yuri’s knees shook and he stepped a little closer to the building they were next to and casually planted himself on the stairs.  _ Oh yeah, that was real smooth _ . 

He tapped the seat next to him, offering it up to Estelle, and she took it, still three seconds away from giving him a complete look over. He couldn’t let that happen. If she found the stab wound...well, that’d be the end of that and the freak out would commence. 

And then Yuri would freak out because he still hadn’t really thought about it in depth. How he almost died. How he should have died and how by some weird grace from a man who hated humanity he was alive. 

It was a little too close to home. Yuri knew he wasn’t invincible, but somewhere between his accursed luck he was also somehow extremely lucky. He’d been in plenty of situations where he should have died. But he hadn’t and he supposed that added a little bit of ego that he definitely shouldn’t have had.

This? This was completely different somehow. It wasn’t at the hand of monsters, but of a person. Someone who was so bent in hatred towards him that they’d kill him. Not to mention it was a person who you wouldn’t even consider capable of murder. Sodia might be hard headed but killing? That was the last thing he expected. 

“Where does it hurt the most?” Estelle put a hand on his shoulder, so carefully now. 

“My chest.” Yuri lied monotone. And it wasn’t a complete lie because next to his stomach those broken ribs were making life extremely difficult. 

Estelle scrutinized him and then healed him once more, slower this time and focusing on Yuri’s chest. When she was finished, she frowned.

“That should do it,”she told him, still worried. Yuri looked absolutely dead on his feet, except not actually on his feet anymore. “Three broken, two more cracked. ” That should take care of the chest pain but now she was worried about the fever and the quiet rattle she could hear in his chest. “Can you get up?”

Yuri blinked, startled.

“Uh, what?” he asked.

“Well, you’re in no condition to stay at home by yourself,” she said reasonably with little room for silly things like the word no, not when it came to someone’s health,“And even then, there’s so much dust around here that whatever I’m hearing in your lungs is just going to get worse if you stay out here for much longer. The inn by the bar you live on top of wasn’t damaged too much, so it should be clean. You need sleep, some food, a bath, and time; we can stay a few days, let everyone know that you’re alright, and give you a chance to recover.”

Even if Yuri refused, Estelle was prepared to dig in her heels and fight him every step of the way. She hadn’t just found him only to lose him to a sickness she could prevented, not in a thousand years.

Yuri, on the other hand, didn’t have any fight left in him. He was tired and hurting and dizzy and he honestly hadn’t even realized he had a fever until Estelle pointed it out. Bed sounded pretty damn good.  _ Fresh air? What was I thinking? There is no fresh air in the lower quarter. _

Taking a deep breath Yuri pushed himself up, quietly thankful for Estelle who pretty much dragged him most of the way. “Whatever the doctor orders.” He said, trying to give her one of those wry smirks he had perfected when he was a little snot of a kid. 

Estelle didn’t look impressed and just pointed up the stairs towards his room.

_ Yikes _ . “Alright alright. I’m going.” And he did. Slowly. And by the time he reached his bed things were blurring together and he would never remember his head hitting the pillow or Estelle going downstairs to the bar and asking to borrow a chair in order to place herself firmly next to his bed or feel Repede curl up on his feet because his crummy blanket was never quite warm enough. 

Yuri was out like a light when Estelle came back upstairs with the chair and a few other things: extra towels to go with the small metal basin that she could fill with water and several containers of still-hot soup left over from the dinner rush; simple food that he’d be able to manage even ill. Maybe she should have been concerned to see him sleeping so deeply after such a short period of being left alone but nevertheless, she settled down in the chair next to him and leaned over until her forehead brushed the line of the blanket bunched up around Yuri’s shoulders.

There were no words Estelle could use to express her relief, nothing she could say or do other than let the tears come. She thought she’d cried all that she could the other day but that was different, that was grief. This was the release of something she thought she’d be living with for the rest of her life, that she’d wear Yuri’s death on her heart and now, instead, she could wear his life instead.

And Estelle cried, not just for herself and her own feelings but for everyone else who had fought it out with her for the last week, the people who she knew would feel the same joy, the same relief as she did now once they knew.

“I missed you so much and I’m so very glad that you’re here,” she whispered. The only person around to hear her was Repede and by the way he was lying heavily on Yuri’s feet, Estelle could only assume that he agreed with her.

Later, after Estelle’s eyes were properly dry, Yuri would wake up long enough to eat some soup and then fall back to sleep, and she wouldn’t be able to do anything but beam at him like an idiot. Later she’d go back downstairs and return one of the empty containers, swapping it out for something a little more substantial for herself. Later she’d scribble out a note that he wouldn’t read in case he woke up again and felt alone (because Estelle knew what she’d feel like if she woke up with no one there) and go out to one of the shops still open and buy a new blanket that she’d drape over him and pretend she knew nothing about when he’d ask about it, even when he called her the crappiest liar to ever live.

Later, Estelle would sit back down next to Yuri and talk until her voice was hoarse.

But until then she’d stay where she was, simply thankful and feeling very, very blessed.


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn’t until after Sodia had sought him out in Nor Harbor that Yuri realized he’d never sent Flynn any sort of letter or message after Zaude.  _ Oops _ . 

And now they were sailing through the air towards what was supposed to be quite the battle between knights and monsters. To Flynn.  _ He’s going to have my head _ . 

Obviously Flynn knew he was alive. Sodia wouldn’t have sought him out otherwise, but he was beginning to wonder if she had done it on her own accord. He really wondered if Flynn would have sent him a plea for help like that. 

It was obvious Sodia was still trying to look after Flynn. Even if she was failing miserably at doing so and suddenly Yuri was having second thoughts about keeping her attempted murder to himself. He told her he wouldn’t tell anyone.

For now.

And that was the most important part of their conversation. He’d wait and see what she’ll do just like he promised. He really can’t hate her for trying to kill him. It was an incredible show of loyalty to Flynn.

It was something Yuri couldn’t do for his best friend because Flynn couldn’t have Yuri by his side and Yuri had realized that in the months after Zaude. It took a lot of thinking, a lot of quiet watches by the campfire, but he understood it eventually. Just why Sodia tried to do what she did. Tried to kill him in cold blood. 

Raven had filled him in on a good deal of what happened during the week he was unconscious. The week they’d spent searching for him every waking moment they could. How Flynn and Estelle had nearly killed themselves. Yuri had already talked to Estelle about that; how she’d better not  _ ever _ do that again in his name or he’d come back from the grave to haunt her. 

He was not worth it. 

Hopefully Flynn learned from his mistake, but he’d still talk to him about it either way.

After he had his ass handed to him because Flynn was still going to  _ kill _ him. 

Shaking his head Yuri leaned against the railing of the Fiertia and closed his eyes, enjoying the wind. He loved being up in the sky with Ba’ul; the air was invigorating and it always gave him the energy he needed to push onto their next task. 

Although, he’d admit that the first time he hopped back on the boat and started soaring through the clouds he didn’t want to be near the rails. It’d taken a few weeks for him to get over the vertigo and flashbacks to the rush of air when he thought it was over.

It still sent a shock down his spine every now and then. Not to mention the ache in his side still twinged from time to time. He was pretty much back to his old self, plus a very pink scar that he had somehow managed to hide from everyone so far. 

“Yuri?”

Yuri looked up to find Estelle walking across the deck towards him. He smiled and straightened up a little. Estelle had been a godsend these past weeks. She’d managed to keep everyone together even after everything that had happened to her involving Alexei because after his fall Yuri had a hard time trying to keep himself from falling apart. 

“Whats up?” He asked kicking his sword sheath he’d put down aside so she could come up next to him. 

Estelle stood for a moment by the rail taking in the air before looking up at him. “Are you okay?”

“Huh? Where’d that come from?”  _ Damn, she’s getting way too perceptive _ . 

“Well, you haven’t seen Flynn since…”

And Yuri laughed. “I was just thinking about that, actually. I think I forgot to send him a ‘Hey, I’m alive’ letter. He’s going to kill me.” 

Estelle frowned.

“Flynn is not going to kill you,” she said firmly before averting her eyes with a sheepish smile. “He’ll have to kill both of us, then, because I forgot to write him as well. If I’d been thinking at all…” 

But that was the thing, she figured, Estelle  _ hadn’t _ been thinking. At all. She’d been so filled with relief and elation over finding him alive that it just...hadn’t happened. And she felt terrible about it, but in the days she’d spent looking after him in the lower quarter, her focus had been on him and only him and ultimately, she was okay with that. Still, she did feel bad about it.

“Nah,” Yuri graced with his most charming smirk. “He couldn’t be mad at you even if he wanted. It’s not in his blood. Me? He’s gunna take his first opening and clock me a good one.”

_ Not that I don’t have it coming _ . Cause Yuri totally did.

* * *

 

About an hour later is when Karol spotted the dust cloud rising into the sky from the land below them. All Yuri could do for a little bit was stare down at the stormy haze with his mouth hanging open. All of that... _ all of it _ came from monsters. Monsters and knights battling. 

_ Damn, Flynn. What did you get yourself into _ ?

Leave it to his best friend to get lost in  _ that _ mess. In a battle that was so obviously hopeless and one sided it hurt to watch.  _ Well, it’s not hopeless anymore _ . They had a plan, they had a weapon and all they had to do was get down there, find Flynn, battle their way into the middle of a tangled web of deranged monsters, and release it.

_ Easy as pie. Right?  _ Although some would argue pie is anything but easy.

It didn’t take any convincing. Everyone had agreed to go before Yuri even asked back in the harbor so Judy made sure Ba’ul landed far enough away where the Vesperia Number 1 couldn’t harm him and they took off like bats out of hell towards the hurricane of dust, screams, clangs, and groans. 

The battle had been going on for a long time, Yuri could tell that much. Bodies were everywhere; both monster and knight alike and it smelled like death and blood and left Yuri wishing he hadn’t eaten that snack a couple hours ago. But still, they ran.

Ran until Yuri spotted blonde bobbing through the dust and a familiar voice ringing out orders and encouragement. Flynn stood at the front line, leading the attack himself. He would never hide himself behind his soldiers. If they were going to die Flynn would make sure he’d be the last to go and that everyone else made it out alive. 

He was so much like their captain. So much the person this world deserved.

Yuri almost froze dead in the middle of his run as he watched Flynn. He’d been lying through his teeth to his friends this far. Lying about Sodia, and Zaude, and his feelings, and..well a whole lot. And it hurt, but it was necessary right now. Saving the world and it’s people was way more important than his feelings. But lying to Flynn? That was going to be a million times harder than anything. 

Raven stopped next to him and raised an eyebrow in silent questioning and Yuri just nodded before taking off again. 

“Flynn!”

Flynn jerked when a familiar voice rang out across the battlefield and he looked past the dust and furor of the fighting to see an equally familiar figure running through it all towards him. He froze and just barely missed getting his head being taken off by a monster.

His jaw fell open.

Of course.  _ Of course _ .

"About damn time!" he bellowed in the midst of hacking away at an overgrown eggbear, “You couldn’t be bothered to send a friggin’ note, you ass?”

Oh, he’d found out about Yuri being alive, of course, and had at the time been so relieved that his knees had given out. Thankfully in the privacy of his own quarters, because it would have been entirely inappropriate (not to mention mortifying) to react like that in front of his knights. Flynn hadn’t actually seen Yuri since Zaude, however, and it was one thing to receive confirmation of his survival and quite another to see him here, alive, and in the flesh.

And yet, despite his relief (or maybe  _ because  _ of his relief), Flynn kind of wanted to punch his lights out.

“Oh come on Flynn!” Yuri rolled his eyes at his friend. He totally deserved this, but he wasn’t going to take it without a fight. Even if it was just for fun. 

And because he really missed doing this to his best friend. “We’ve been kind of busy if you haven’t noticed! Saving the world and everything.”

“Letters don’t take very long,” Flynn replied with a roll of his eyes.

“Meh.” Yuri waved a hand through the air as he spun around in a series of spins taking down two monsters consecutively. “Lecture me later about manners. Right now we’re here to save you. Again.”

“Excuse you!” Flynn snapped back, “ _ Who _ needs saving?”

“You, obviously.”

“You’re unbelievable  _ and _ out of your damn mind! Don’t even think you’re getting away with not writing me! That’s number seventeen, by the way,” Flynn countered and chucked what had once been a poison-spewing bat in Yuri’s direction.

“We’re counting now? That’s no fair, you got a head start!” Yuri swung around to go back-to-back with Flynn, his sword strokes matching his friend’s perfectly.

Flynn grinned, bright and with teeth.

“You’d better start catching up, then!”

“And people say I’m the bad influence…” Yuri let a small ‘che’ click between his teeth. “We’ll see about that, but for now. Let me tell you about this thing our genius mage whipped up the other day.”

And true to Rita’s word the Vesperia Number 1 worked like a charm. An amazing, impossible charm that left everyone on the battlefield with their jaws dropped. Yuri included. Rita really was something else.  _ Man, I’m kinda glad she wasn’t the thief now _ . 

And that was where Yuri had to stop for a moment and just look around him. At Estelle running to every injured person as fast as her feet could take her and Raven urging those that could to get up on their feet and make it to camp. Judy and Karol helping some limp around the rubble and Rita making sure the aer in the area wasn’t going bring anymore monsters.

Then there was Flynn in the middle of it all helping and ordering and cleaning and doing everything at once. “Like always…” 

Yuri frowned as he stretched his arms in front of him, they’d been fighting a lot more recently and he hadn’t really noticed just how stiff he was. Or how much his side still had to heal. It  _ hurt _ right now in a way that it hadn’t since a couple days after waking up in Zaphias. He couldn’t help the flinch that made him double over for a quick second which he tried to cover up by leaning over to pick up his sword sheath.

_ That was classy. And look at that...Flynn’s staring at me. _

Flynn hadn’t missed Yuri’s quick show of pain. Maybe someone else wouldn’t have seen but Flynn hadn’t seen his best friend in what felt like ages and was drinking in every detail of him, and that flinch hadn’t gotten past him by a long shot.

Frowning, Flynn walked over to where Yuri stood, barely resisting the urge to do a walk around him just to make sure. If this wasn’t eventually going to become a fist fight (and let’s be real, it probably would), then doing that definitely would. Even though Flynn still definitely wanted to punch Yuri’s face in a little bit.

“You okay?” he asked, and he didn’t wait for a reply before a quick and dirty first aid circle was lighting up under his feet.

The scuffs and bruises and scrapes disappeared but Yuri didn’t look like he really felt better, even though superficial injuries were the only ones that Flynn could see. That…was really weird. A really not good kind of weird.

Yuri waited a minute until the stinging on his skin stopped and let out the breath he’d suddenly held go very slowly. “Yep, we’re good.” he bit out a little more high pitched than he intended. 

Mostly because that was a lie. Sure the little cuts he didn’t even realize he’d gotten during the fight were now gone and that bruise  on his shoulder from the other day was finally not bothering him, but healing hurt more now a days than anything else.

Yuri never really understood magic. It was something he never bothered to get; it took too much studying and time and...effort. He always said he’d leave the complicated stuff to the people who had the drive. He didn’t so he never bothered to try. He didn’t need magic or healing arts. He had his sword and as long as it was between him and his enemy that was all that really mattered. 

It wasn’t between his stomach and Sodia, however and that’s when Yuri started paying attention a little more to Estelle’s healing. When he’d told her his ribs hurt she focused on his bones and muscles in his chest. When she saw a particular cut the warmth from the flash of a spell was always hotter right over the wound. 

When he  _ didn’t _ tell her what was hurt it wasn’t that it didn’t get healed. It was more like it didn’t get healed properly. So now when he got a cut on his arm and Estelle healed him he felt it in his side more than anywhere else. Because it hurt when it wasn’t supposed to. 

Damn, why did Flynn have to know first aid anyway? Didn’t he have a whole battalion of healers in his army?  _ Over achiever.  _

Finally shaking himself Yuri put his sword back in its sheath with slightly shaking hands and cocked his head to the side as he looked back up at Flynn. “Thanks for that.” 

But not really. 

“Don’t mention it,” Flynn said with an upward tilt of his lips but didn’t really feel better. How could he when it was so obvious that something wasn’t as it should be?

Still, this  _ was _ the first time he’d seen Yuri since the fight with Alexei atop Zaude and there was a lot to talk about and a lot had happened, and Flynn put his reservations inside a neatly organized file that he kept in his head to think about and remember later. He reached out and clapped Yuri on the shoulder, squeezing a second longer than he normally would have.

“Can we go…” he made a gesture to an area that was out of earshot, away from the hustle and bustle. “We should talk. Play catch-up.” Now that the action was over and done with (holy  _ hell _ had that been a weapon) Flynn was more focused on other things, like the well being of his best friend.

Yuri  _ looked _ okay as far as everything went but looking okay and being okay were not the same things at all, and as of late...well, Flynn seemed to do better these days if he looked things over himself instead of trusting it to others, even if it made his life a little more difficult.

It seemed that everyone had their jobs that they needed to do and as newly minted commandant  Flynn had plenty on his plate, but this was  _ important _ .

“Uh, sure,” Yuri replied with a raised eyebrow and followed Flynn out to the quiet clearing that was currently void of people. 

Flynn stopped abruptly and turned to face him, scrutinizing him up and down. And then without warning he reached out to scrub his hand over Yuri’s hair in a manner reminiscent of their noogie-giving youth.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said fiercely. “I was so worried.”

Yuri batted at Flynn’s hand. “The hell, Flynn? I’m not twelve anymore and neither are you.”

“I beg to differ.”

Yuri rolled his eyes and sighed, putting a hand on his hip...and immediately dropped it.  _ Ow, I’ve  gotta stop doing that _ . 

Yuri turned to walk back towards the crowd of soldiers. “Well now that you’ve petted me to make sure I’m not a ghost, shall we? Looks like there’s a lot to do and we’ve got some news for you that you’ll probably want to hear.” 

In all honestly Yuri didn’t like being away from Estelle and everyone right now. It was awkward and he just wanted to get down to business before he would have to inevitably lie to Flynn. He’d already almost slipped up a whole bunch both during the battle and now after and he knew Flynn saw. It was just how much longer would it take for him to mention something?

Flynn didn’t budge.  _ Oh come on. Don’t...please don’t.  _

“You coming or should I save you a bowl of Raven’s famous post battle vegetable soup?” Yuri turned to face his friend and raised an eyebrow through his bangs which he prayed were hiding the anxiety written all over his face. 

Yuri Lowell didn’t get anxious and Flynn knew that. Why? Why was he two steps away from freaking out? He hadn’t been thus far...why does Flynn always have to do this to him? 

Flynn stayed where he was and trusted that Yuri wouldn’t walk away without him. His instincts proved true when Yuri turned back to him and shifted uneasily. He didn’t have a lot of tells but the ones he did have Flynn knew, and he was showing the major ones: the shiftiness, the quick hiding of his face in his hair, and the sudden change in subject.

It didn’t add up entirely but the options weren’t good.

Yuri had something to hide from him, which meant that it would either hurt him or hurt someone around him.

Yuri had something to hide that was making him legitimately upset.

Flynn reached out and gripped Yuri by the arm, squeezing down when muscles tensed under his palm.

“Are you alright, Yuri?” he asked very seriously, “You’re acting kind of strange. You’re not…” he fumbled for words and his mouth felt dry, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

_ Damnit, damnit, damnit! _

“I’m fine, Flynn.” And that legitimately hurt to say. 

But it was necessary, right? Because Flynn had so much crap in his life that he needed to take care of. Stuff that was  _ way more _ important than some petty flashback that caught the air in Yuri’s throat every once and while. He had a world to put back together. All Yuri had to do was save it.

Honestly, Flynn had the harder job. So he had to suck it up and stop being selfish and stuff his hesitations and fears because making Flynn worry was the last thing he needed on top of his head. 

“I’m fine.” He repeated a little more firmly. He was  _ so close _ to losing it. 

Flynn frowned and didn’t believe him in the slightest.

“I don’t know why you’re lying to me,” he said eventually. “I don’t know what you’re lying about but there’s something you’re not telling me and the more you tell me that you’re fine the less I believe you.” He looked Yuri up and down and was only more convinced that he was right.

Everyone was worn. Everyone was tired. Everyone was afraid.

But this was  _ Yuri _ and he was Flynn and they’d been looking after each other for years, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

“What happened to you, Yuri?” he asked. “No one’s told me anything  _ o _ utside of the fact that you were alive. There was a week’s span between Zaude and when Lady Estellise found you in Zaphias.” And that was one of the things that had been eating him right along with the relief ever since he found out that Yuri was alive. And Flynn hadn’t gotten a single tangible answer so far, not from anyone.

Not from Lady Estellise, not from any of the others...and not from Yuri himself.

“What happened?”

Yuri screwed his face up, scrunching one eye shut.  _ Of course. _ Of course Flynn would want to talk about  _ that _ right  _ then _ . It couldn’t have waited until at least dinner or at least a solid hour after the battle ended. Nope, fifteen minutes later and he was about to go over everything he never wanted to think about.

“I’d tell ya if I could.” Yuri crossed his arms over his chest as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “But I wasn’t really with it.”

_ He is so not amused _ . Judging by his friend’s face Yuri had a grand total of ten seconds to come up with a better less excuse. 

“Look, I was out for that whole week. Duke saved me.”

Flynn raised an eyebrow. “Duke?”

Yuri nodded and tugged on a lock of his own hair. “Yeah, you know. Tall guy, white hair, deep voice, frilly jacket. Shows up at the most convenient and inconvenient times. Usually carries that sword I had at the shrine and always whines about how much he hates humans….this isn’t ringing any bells, is it?” Flynn shook his head and Yuri shrugged. “Well, whatever. I don’t know the particulars, but he saved me to save the sword and that’s about it.”

“Uh...huh.” Flynn’s raised eyebrow did not lower. “And he saved you, took care of you for a whole week, just to make sure a sword was safe.”

“Yes?” 

Yuri should have known Flynn wouldn’t really buy any of it. Yuri barely bought it from Duke. Even if all of that was the truth, it just wasn’t  _ all of the truth _ . Or really any good deal of it because Yuri did remember parts of that week. They had come back to him slowly, usually in the night in the form of a quick nightmare or if the wind pushed against his back just enough to make him remember.

He remembered thinking he was dead. That maybe he was in his own room in a special corner of hell. That place Barbos promised to keep for him before he flung himself off Ghasfarost. He remembered the pain and the fever. Calling out to people who weren’t there: Flynn and Estelle and even little Karol. He remembered finally submitting to the fact that they weren’t going to be there the next time he opened his eyes. 

“I don’t know what to tell you.” Yuri dropped his hands to his sides and let out a huff. “The guy baffles me and I really can’t remember a whole lot. When I woke up for good he left pretty much within the next two minutes and then I ran into Estelle…” Yuri trailed off and scratched his head.  _ Damn, and that’s where it gets foggy again _ .  _ I give up. _

He hadn’t even realized how much he didn’t remember. Once he was up and moving he was..well up and moving and converting spirits and saving the world. He was dealing with leading a guild and his group. Moments of frustration and anger about other things not himself. So that week had kind of faded to the background for him. 

Partially because he didn’t think about it and partially because he didn’t  _ want _ to think about it. 

Throughout Yuri’s short speech, Flynn went very, very still until he was little more than a Flynn-shaped statue standing in the middle of a meadow.

It wasn’t the things that Yuri was saying that were important, it was what he hadn’t said. He hadn’t said a word about how he was feeling, what had happened outside of the mysterious Duke fellow picking him up out of nowhere (and Flynn wasn’t sure just how much of that he believed, either). He hadn’t said how badly he’d been hurt or why he hadn’t been able to leave Zaphias.

If it had been no big deal, Yuri would have told him in an instant.

That was just the way that he rolled. When it didn’t matter, he sang like a canary; when he was really injured or upset or compromised...that was when Yuri shut down and hid it all away. He’d always been like that and Flynn knew it; knew his tells and knew what he was saying in what he wasn’t saying.

It had to have been bad, and the thought shook Flynn down to his bones.

It had to have been  _ really  _ bad for Yuri to require a week’s care from a stranger, where he couldn’t do anything but rely on someone else. For him to have been unconscious for an entire week…

The thought was terrifying and it suddenly recurred to Flynn the things he’d had to spend that whole hellish week trying to accept:

That it was a very real possibility that Yuri had died.

He could have died so very, very easily and the thought was horrific. He’d gotten so used to the relief in knowing that Yuri was safe and in good hands that he’d tried to not think about how close he could have come to death and maybe that wasn’t such a good thing, because Flynn thought about it now and felt like he was freezing.

It had been  _ so close _ .

He swallowed hard and forced himself to unclench his fingers from their set around his sword, tight to the point of white-knuckled. Maybe he ought to sit down with Lady Estellise and get some more details from her. Flynn fought the urge to reach out and touch, just to make sure that Yuri was solid and real and not some sort of awful ghost.

“Is that…” Flynn began, “Is that all? You don’t remember  _ anything _ ?”

“I guess I don’t because that’s…” Yuri grit his teeth. “That’s all I got.” 

_ Oh boy...he’s pale _ . Flynn didn’t move. Didn’t move or speak or do anything that Yuri was expecting his friend to do. (Mostly punch him). He just stood there, still as a statue, and looked Yuri up and down with his bright blue eyes.

And all Yuri wanted to do was turn and run. Really far and really fast. It was like Flynn knew about the stab wound, but how could he? No one knew.  _ No one _ ...well, that was a lie because someone did know but he’d promised to keep quiet about it. 

So Flynn couldn’t know, but Yuri suddenly found his hand floating to his side to cover his scar. Not that anyone could see it under his shirt, but it made him feel better. Kind of. Not really, though. 

Finally Flynn shifted, eyeing Yuri’s hand before finally locking his gaze with Yuri’s. He obviously wanted to say something or ask something, but he was hesitating and that just made Yuri’s blood boil even more. 

“How about you, Flynn?” Yuri suddenly found himself snapping the words harshly at his friend. “Why don’t we talk about your week? A whole week at a flooded, broken shrine. I bet a lot happened.”

Flynn flinched for a second, just a split second, and then his worry was amplified with anger that made him bristle like a furious cat.

“My week? he sputtered, “ _ My _ week?” His hands clenched harder around the hilt of his sword. “Okay, then, if that’s how you want to do it, we’ll talk about my week.”

Yuri stared as if he hadn’t expected that and Flynn felt a strange, vindictive sort of pleasure in it that was mixed with drops of guilt. Did he feel bad for how he was inevitably going to make Yuri feel? Hell yes, he did, but at the same time…

Despite the reasons, despite that Flynn had basically cornered him, Yuri had to know that what he’d just said had hurt him. He’d hit Flynn right where it hurt and Flynn wasn’t stupid, he knew his men darted around that subject and ignored the existence of that week as if it were lit up above his head that said  _ this is Flynn Scifo’s epic sore spot _ . He knew that it was obvious and he was self-aware enough to know that he wasn’t over it yet.

At all.

And if Yuri remembered anything (and he did, Flynn could smell it on him), he definitely wasn’t either.

The thought was enough to make him angry.

“My week was filled with thinking my best friend was dead,” Flynn snapped and took a step forward. Yuri took a tiny step back but held his ground. “My week was filled with searching for  _ you _ , from the ocean and the air and in the shrine and everywhere we could think of. I got to watch the princess run herself into the ground and couldn’t do a thing about it because otherwise I’d be a hypocrite. I got to watch your guildmaster practically shrink away to nothing. I got to... _ geez _ , Yuri. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if it hadn’t been for Raven.” That was another sore spot, but one that didn’t sting like this one did. Nowhere close. “If you want to harsh out details, I’ll give you details. You won’t want them and I don’t really want talk about them but you’re welcome to them.”

He dragged in a harsh breath and let it out slowly.

“It was the worst week of my life, Yuri. The  _ worst _ .”

And he wasn’t over it yet.

“If that’s what’s you want, we’ll talk about it. But you need to talk to me too, because right now you’re not telling me crap.” 

_ And there’s a reason for that! _ But Yuri couldn’t say that because then he’d never be able to walk away from this and everything in this world would be compromised because he couldn’t keep his stupid fears in check. He’d let it slip and then Flynn would be devastated and Sodia wouldn’t be a knight and the world needed to be saved and it just couldn’t happen.

_ Not now!! _

“Fine! You want me to talk, Flynn? I’ll talk. ” Yuri didn’t bother to keep anything in check. He outright yelled. He could talk and tell. He just couldn’t tell all of it and that’s where the rest of this conversation was going to suck.

Because he had already lied to Flynn. Now he was going to hurt his best friend on purpose just to keep that lie going.

_ What the hell kind of monster am I turning into? _

“Where would you like me to start?” Yuri purposefully dropped his sword to the ground at his feet and turned his empty shaking hands palm up. “Where I was completely incapable of doing anything on my own? Where I was confused as hell as to what was happening or even where I was? I thought I was dead, Flynn. I thought I had failed all of you.

“I thought I had left you with the world’s biggest mess and I thought you were going to hate me. Because along the way? I became more a part of this problem than I ever intended to be and I wanted to fix it. But I couldn’t because I was  _ in hell _ . Alone and I had finally realized that none of you were going to be there the next time I opened my eyes and that somehow made it better?”

Spirits, where was this coming from? Yuri couldn’t stop even though he couldn’t believe some of the things that were coming from his own mouth. Did he really feel like that? Was that what had gone through his head? He couldn’t even remember and yet..

“And then I did wake up and the only person there was Duke until he left and then I ran into Estelle and it didn’t take me long to realize what you all must have thought. That you all must have assumed I was rotting somewhere at the bottom of the ocean or washed up on some long off shore line. 

“It was in her eyes, Flynn, and she cried when she thought I was sleeping, but I  _ heard her _ and I hated myself even more for it.” Yuri took one step toward his friend and shook his head once. “A good knock to the head, a busted up rib cage, and one hell of a fever later I finally got to get up and get going again and pick up where I should never have left off and and...that’s why I’m here and that’s where I’m going to leave it! 

“What do you want me to say, Flynn?” Yuri whipped an arm out to the side in some attempt to keep his fist from flying at his friend’s face. “That everything is perfect? That everything is the best that it could possibly be?”

And Yuri wasn’t quite sure why he suddenly felt more furious than he could ever remember getting. It was more towards himself than Flynn, but at the same time why did Flynn have to push him like that? Why did he always have to pry?

Why did Flynn Scifo have to be so Flynn Scifo? 

Flynn just stared at him, narrowed eyes and arms crossed. He knew exactly how to get to Yuri and most of the time it was by not saying anything at all. 

“Damnit, Flynn!” Yuri’s voice cracked and then took a couple breaths trying to calm the shake in his words. 

He failed miserably. “Look, you really want to know so bad? I’m tired. I’m really tired. It’s been a hard couple of weeks and having everyone hanging over me like I’m about to crack in half isn’t helping. Yeah, I got hurt pretty bad but Estelle took really good care of me and I’m just a little sore now. That’s all. I can still fight. I can still do everything I need to do.

“I’m sorry about Zaude, okay? I’m sorry I made you all worry. I heard about what happened...about afterwards and damn you all! Damn you Flynn, for pushing yourself like that for my sake. For my stupid life!”

Oh. Oh,  _ crap _ .

And that was something that Flynn hadn’t gotten around to dealing with yet, the thought that Yuri’d be feeling plenty of guilt of his own. He’d known, logically, because he knew Yuri, and Yuri never thought twice about being a pain when it didn’t matter but just like when he was hurt, when it was serious? He wouldn’t breathe a word. And this was deathly serious. Flynn had mentioned it in temper and hurt feelings because Yuri had hurt him first, but he should have thought it through better, maybe. 

At the very least he could have been a little less vindictive about it.

Flynn had done the waiting, done the patience, done the pain. But he hadn’t been the one to go off the tower.

Or maybe in a way this was what Yuri needed, because there was no way that he’d spoken about it with anyone yet. It was clear from the way he’d talked about Estelle that he’d rather gut himself than put anything else on her, and Flynn, while frustrated, understood that about him. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t also need to face it, and admit that he’d been afraid and felt abandoned, had thought he was going to die, and Flynn was strong enough to take that even though it hurt to know those things. 

It wouldn’t make him cry.

Yuri had probably been stewing in this since he’d woken up in Zaphias.

Still, Flynn couldn’t stand to hear any more of that nonsense and when Yuri finally stopped to take a breath, he stepped forward to wrap an arm firmly around his neck and reel him in tightly enough to shut him up.

“You stupid--,” he grumbled, “Am I gonna have to spell it out?”

Yuri stiffened like he was going to say something else and Flynn shook his head once, then twice.

“I’m sorry we weren’t there,” he said and emphasized his words with another squeeze. “I know that there’s nothing anyone could do to change it but I’m sorry anyway. You shouldn’t have had to feel like that and if there was any way that I could change it, I would.”

It was so strange to actually need to say these kinds of things because so much of the time, Flynn didn’t need to say anything for Yuri to know what he meant. But this time Flynn thought he kind of needed to say it straight out. There was no way to change it now but Flynn thought briefly, of how this could have turned out if Estele had gone to Zaphias sooner. If anyone had gone. Anyone would have been okay if it would have helped stave off the feelings of shame, that he’d failed his best friend even though there was nothing anyone could do about it.

“I thought I was the bullheaded one out of the two of us, if all that crap you’re always talking is to be believed. We’re  _ all _ stupid and yeah, maybe it was dumb. It probably  _ was  _ dumb. But that’s why it’s so important and don’t think for a second that I regret it because I will literally kick your ass six ways from next week.”

There was more to this than Flynn could possibly know, he knew that much, but he wasn’t going to just lay down and let Yuri beat himself up over it. He was annoyed about the lack of letter but that wasn’t what Yuri was talking about at all. He was apologizing, defensively but still apologizing, for Zaude, which wasn’t the same at all.

“We made our own choices,” he said gently, dropped heavy words like feathers instead of blows, “Me, Lady Estellise, everyone, and I’m pretty sure you know what she’d say if you asked her whether she regretted it. I choose what I do. Me.”

He squeezed once more and then let Yuri go. They usually preferred to punch each other or deal in shoulder claps or fist bumps rather than hugs but this time Flynn didn’t think that would quite cut it and sometimes, pure and sappy honesty was best.

“My stupid decisions are still my stupid decisions.” Flynn trailed off and shifted on the balls of his feet. Here was the part he  _ wasn’t _ quite so comfortable with. “I’m sorry to have worried you.”

Yuri didn’t answer at first. Staring at his feet, clenching and unclenching his fists. This sucked. This sucked  _ so _ much. Not because Flynn was right and not because he felt like an idiot for exploding. Those were a part of it but…

He lied. In the sea of semi-truths he really didn’t want to say in the first he’d still lied through his teeth and he hated himself for it. Flynn didn’t deserve this.

But it’s what Yuri needed and now that he started he couldn’t just take it back. Not right now. He’d told himself why. He’d stick to it. He had to stop making this about himself. This was about Flynn and him being a pretty damn amazing person. A pretty damn amazing friend and not regretting it.

Finally lifting his head Yuri smirked his best smirk. “That was my line first, jerk.” 

“You snooze, you lose,” Flynn countered with a smirk of his own that wasn;t as genuine as it could have been. “But duly noted,” he continued, “And apology accepted.” And then, before it got too schmoopy, “But seriously, no note at all?  _ Really _ ?”

“What? I don’t carry pens on me or anything.” Yuri shrugged. “And Rita won’t lend me hers because heaven forbid she runs out of ink in the middle of some equation or another and Estelle says I’ll lose hers.”

Flynn snorted as he stalked past Yuri, finally heading back towards the small ratty settlement the knights had set up for the refugees. “You would.”

“Probably.” And it was quiet for a little as the two walked until something struck Yuri; a part of the conversation he had been planning on. “Say, Flynn…” Yuri grinned as he followed a few paces behind his friend. “I heard you met Ba’ul.”

Flynn paused mid-step and turned around to peer at Yuri, gauging the amount of genuine curiosity in the statement. There was none.

Like, at all.

“ _ Excuse me _ ?”

Yuri’s smirk widened and he slapped Flynn on the shoulder as he walked past him, sniggering under his breath.

“Yeah, Judy had a pretty fun story to tell me when we met up again,” he said flippantly even as Flynn went red and began to sputter indignantly. “Apparently you squeaked? I missed out; think you can demonstrate that for me, buddy?”

“Y-you shut up!” Flynn ordered despite the flush of color in his cheeks at the memory and Yuri let out what couldn’t be anything other than an outright cackle.

“Make me!” And then he began jogging off back towards camp, laughing all the while, Flynn on his heels and furiously shaking his fist.

“Damnit Yuri, I swear---"

* * *

 

The issue was left to rest, then, or so it seemed.

They wouldn’t talk about it again for a long, long while, but Flynn would keep that filed folder safe in his memories, that would occasionally remind him that something was wrong and it wasn’t just to do with the Adephagos streaking the sky. Flynn would let it go but he wouldn’t forget it and over time, Yuri seemed to have gotten over whatever ailed him, or talked about it with someone who could help him like Flynn couldn’t, or something.

Flynn would let it go but he wouldn’t forget it.

Occasionally, he would ask something a little too pointed that couldn’t be anything but on purpose, as if he could sniff out lies like a dog. Every once in a while, someone would say something about how shy Yuri’d gotten about taking his shirt off in public when he used to whip it off without really thinking about it, like guys were wont to do, or the way Estelle would watch him in concern when he’d jerk suddenly away from the railings of the Fiertia as if they’d burned him. It was all very small things,  _ very _ small things, but there were a lot of them, a lot of them that, over time, would add up.

And over time it would get harder and harder and harder to hide it.

But for now the issue was, seemingly, left to rest.

For a while.

At least until Yuri returned to Zaphias with a very specific task at hand, and everything would come flooding back, and no one would be ready for it.

But that wouldn’t happen for a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for this part of the story! Thank you all so much for reading and for all the kudos! It really means a lot to me that people are enjoying this work. Legi and I really put a lot of ourselves into this fic along with the others in this series. So thank you thank you!
> 
> The next part of this series is Tales of the Campfire and I'll start posting that as soon as possible. It is currently unfinished because towards the end is when Legi and I had our falling out, but I will attempt to finish it. 
> 
> Thanks again and see you next time! -Siri

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! The next chapter will be up soon so please leave a review if you have anything at all to tell me. I welcome any and all kinds of creative feedback!


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